V For Vile

At first, I was nervous. I am not a hater by nature; I generally consider myself an enthusiast. How could I, then, participate in this Festival of Hate? Is there a way to responsibly choose something that’s worth hating on? Perhaps, I thought, I should just refuse to participate all together.

Noah asked me to pick my candidate for Worst Comic Of All Time. Being a good graduate student, I decided I needed some kind of rubric for determining Worst. Whatever I chose had to (A) Be made by competent, even skilled, creators (Ed Wood style badness wouldn’t do!), (B) Fail on its own terms to the extent they can be determined by a good-faith reading of the text, (C) Be not only bad but hateful in some way and (D) Influential.

There were several candidates that leapt to mind, but were unable to fulfill all four. The 300, for example, is hateful, made by a skilled creator and influential. But it doesn’t fail on its own terms. It is trying to be The Triumph of the Will of American Empire, a racist, pro-fascism pamphlet in which Western Society is attacked by ever darker, more exotic and queerer antagonists. On this front, it succeeds. It is, as a friend of mine put it, “a delicious pie baked by Goebbels.”

This search eventually lead me to Alan Moore and David Lloyd’s V For Vendetta, a work that fulfills all four criteria with aplomb. It’s a competently made, terrible, hateful failure on its own terms that has, sadly, had some influence, particularly on the radical left, who really should know better by now. It manages to be brazenly misogynist, horrifically violent, and thuddingly dull all at the same time. It’s one of the few books that spawned a film adaptation that is both borderline-unwatchable and an improvement on its source[1]. Moore and Lloyd appear to have set out to make Nineteen Eighty-Four with a happy ending, and instead ended up making a leftish The Fountainhead.

For those not in the know, V For Vendetta is Alan Moore’s first longform work with original characters. An anarchist response to the election of Margaret Thatcher, V takes place in a fascist England after the whole rest of human civilization has been wiped out in WWIII[2]. Seemingly out of nowhere arrives V, a faceless terrorist who wears a Guy Fawkes mask and pursues two goals: revenge on the people who imprisoned and medically experimented on him in a concentration camp, and bringing down the government.

The book sets out to be a kind of action-thriller with political content, a work that uses a compelling story and the basic tools of mainstream comics (read: violence) to smuggle in a lot of pro-anarchism speeches and “thought provoking” sequences about individual and political freedom. On both of these fronts, it fails massively. It does not work as a thriller because we are never as readers in any doubt that V will succeed. He assures us again and again that he has a plan and at no point in the book does this plan seem in any kind of jeopardy[3]. He suffers no setbacks. He in no way struggles. Everything moves forward with the inexorability of a Greek Tragedy, but one that takes the gods’ point of view instead of the mortals. This sabotages any potential thrill the story might have as a story. Narrative tension generally relies on some mix between questions the audience needs answered and answers the audience has that the characters don’t. Neither is present in this book. The mystery as to V’s origin—really, the only even mildly compelling question in the text—is resolved before the first third is over.

The political content, such as it is, is no great shakes either. Yes, radical anarchy is preferable to jackbooted fascism. And in a world in which sanity means conformity to a genocidal, hyper-consumerist, corrupt authoritarian society, maybe we all need to go a little mad. V, however, ends just before fascist England actually falls. Moore gets to have it both ways, making a case that a radical anarchist state would be a really great thing without ever having to imagine for the reader what that world would look like. He even has V go to great lengths to explain that the riots, looting and murder taking place in England’s streets as the government collapses aren’t anarchy at all, but rather chaos. I suppose anarchy, like Communism, can never fail; it can only be failed.

The problem with shoddy political allegories like VFor Vendetta (or The Dark Knight) is that the alternative realities they rely on to make their experiments work are so preposterous and rigged that they end up disproving themselves. True, were England to be taken over by Nazis, terrorism would likely be justified. But making a book arguing this case is a waste of time and energy. You might as well write a book making the in depth argument that if your Aunt had bollocks, she’d be your Uncle.

Well-crafted dystopian narratives understand this. Nineteen Eighty-Four doesn’t spend a lot of time arguing to the reader that the INGSOC should be overturned. Neither does Brazil contain a stemwinding speech about the tyranny of bureaucracy that Sam Lowry toils under. Instead, both bring to the table a rich examination of the psyche of those living under a dystopian state. Sam Lowry’s inner conflict between being a distracted dreamer and a bureaucratic climber slyly interacts with his gradual education into how his world and privilege work. Nineteen Eighty-Four’s portrayal of the gradual wearing down of Winston Smith’s psyche and of the way the totalitarian mindset is formed and reinforced at every turn, is harrowing and moving[4].

In order for V for Vendetta to pull something similar off, it would have to care about the characters who inhabit it. Sadly, the souls wandering its richly illustrated pages are mere pawns—or, to use the book’s own recurring image, dominoes—they are there to be set up and moved around as the narrative sees fit, toppled when expediency demands.

Nowhere is this more true than in the work’s treatment of Evey Hammond, V’s female sidekick[5] and eventual replacement. Evey is a shopworn narrative trope, the neophyte who joins the narrative so that the world can be explained to her, and via her, the audience[6]. Evey is the reader-surrogate within the novel, the person who has to try to make sense of V’s actions, while V is placed as the author’s surrogate, the explainer and shaper of the narrative. Repeatedly, we are reminded that V is creating something for us, something that seems chaotic, but that will reveal a pattern if we just wait and are patient. For example, this section comes from a journal of one of V’s “doctors” at the prison camp:

While later on, we see a recurring image of V setting up dominoes in his home base without being able to see the pattern, only to have it be revealed that it is his trademark V symbol right before he topples them all and the state of England:

If Evey is meant to be the reader and V is meant to be creator, it’s worth pointing out exactly how V For Vendetta’s creators feel about their audience. “I’m a baby,” Evey says to V. “I know I’m stupid.”:

V for Vendetta is the kind of book that proceeds from the assumption that the reader is a moron, and if only we were properly enlightened, we would agree with its creator. We are the gutless conformists, who just need a good stern talking to (and a little bit of torturing) to convince us of our errors. And here comes a guy who talks a lot like Alan Moore—all allusions and quotes from other sources, weird obscure jokes and puns, cryptic clues—to show us the way. It is, in that way, no different from The Newsroom: the work of a blowhard who is incapable of imagining anyone ever disagreeing with him, or a world in which he could possibly be wrong.

I suppose this shadow agenda of proving Alan Moore smarter than us would be all fine and good were the book to succeed in it. Sadly, amidst all that allusion and reference there’s a glaring neon sign that V for Vendetta is not nearly as smart as it thinks it is:

That’s our man V there. He’s wearing his trademark Guy Fawkes mask. Guy Fawkes is the book’s symbolic hero. Lloyd mentions in an afterward that he wanted to rehabilitate Fawkes because blowing up parliament was a great idea. But—and I hope this is obvious to many of you when you stop and think about it—it’s patently absurd to take Guy Fawkes as an anarchist-leftist superhero. Fawkes was a ex-soldier and Catholic extremist trying to overthrow an authoritarian anti-Catholic State and replace it with an authoritarian Catholic one. It’s just plain dumb to borrow the symbol of Fawkes without the slightest care for what it represents, just as it is an act of idiocy for the hacker group Anonymous and various members of Occupy—a movement I support, I hasten to add— to adopt the Fawkes mask as their icon.

As the book wears on (and on, and on) it also gets derailed by its panic and anger at female infidelity, a crime that is punished with gleeful violence at every turn. On pages 39-41, V recasts his quest to free England as a lover’s spat with the female statue of Justice, who has cheated on him with Authority:

Care to guess how it ends?:

When Evey propositions V, he abandons her on the streets of England. Having nowhere else to go, she briefly takes up with a liquor smuggler named Gordon. With the inexorability of an early-eighties horror movie, as soon as she has sex with him, he gets killed by gangsters. After this, she is kidnapped, tortured, and interrogated, as faceless interlocutors demand to know the location of V and his plans. At night, she reads a letter from a fellow inmate which gives her the courage to accept death rather than betray V. It is then revealed that the whole kidnap/torture/interrogation thing was an elaborate ploy by V to set Evey free by helping her get down to the individual freedom that exists within us, the last thing that we control. While initially upset, here’s Evey’s eventual response from page 174:

This would be hard enough to swallow were it not for the fact that Evey’s incarceration included sexualized imagery:

And actual sexual assault:

You see, dear reader, if you won’t see the light, we have the freedom, as filmmaker Michael Haneke put it, to rape you into enlightenment. Stockholm Syndrome is liberty. Also, War is Peace and Ignorance is Strength. Just shut your pretty little mouth and do what the author tells you. Never you mind that this is supposed to all be about radical individuality being the only way forward. You are radically free to agree and that’s about it.

Finally on the docket of cheating women who need to be punished, we have Helen Heyer. Helen becomes a regular presense in the third act of the book, as the (oddly fragile given that it’s supposed to be frighteningly all-powerful) society crumbles. The wife of a high-ranking fascist, Helen tries to maneuver her husband into the role of Leader by sexually manipulating his colleagues. She also refuses him sex. Helen is a classic misogynist caricature, simultaneously frigid and a whore, using her body to get ahead. It doesn’t work, of course. V sends her husband a videotape of her sleeping around, he murders her lover and is killed in the process. Helen’s plans come to naught and the book’s supposedly-cathartic orgy of chaos and violence ends on the final page with her about to be gang raped by hobos because she’s sick of trading sexual favors to them for food. Seriously. That’s the book’s ending.

All of Moore’s bad habits as a writer are on display in V, from its misogyny to the stentorian, hectoring tone of the text whenever its eponymous hero shows up to its frantic, desperate need to impress us with its creator’s brilliance. I feel I’ve only really scratched the surface of V For Vendetta’s terribleness here. Part of me was tempted to simply scan the song on pages 89-93 and write “Game, Set, Match,” underneath, or discuss the hackneyed and emotionally manipulative story about what happens to one of the prominent fascists’s wives after he dies, how she comes to miss his physical and emotional abuse when she has to take up a stripping job for money. Or catalogue the way in which each allusion—to everything from MacBeth to Sympathy for the Devil—is constructed not because of its actual relation to the material, but because it’s impressive.

Instead, let me close on a personal note. The reason why I find V For Vendetta so upsetting, the reason why it makes me so angry, is on some level political. I am a leftist. Unapologetically so. That V For Vendetta—with its nihilistic embrace of violence, it’s distrust of the institutions that will be required to enact any lefty agenda, its hatred of women and its love of coercion— has caught on amongst lefties, that in particular Guy Fawkes has been taken as a symbol of anything other than far-right religious terrorism is something I find particularly galling. I worry that at heart some of my fellow travelers on the Left feel reified by this work’s subtextual assertion that anyone who disagrees with them must be blinkered, an uninformed idiot who simply needs to be enlightened or blown up.

I suppose there is another way to read V, one where the surface and subtext are actually in constant conflict. One where the first chapter’s title (The Villain) is meant to be taken more seriously, where we are meant to see Evey’s torture not as she comes to eventually see it, but for the problematic and rapey coercion of one who disagrees with our main character. Maybe we are meant to see the downfall of the state as a complicated thing, and the gang-raping hobos not as a darkly ironic enforcement of Moore’s id but rather as a sign of complexity in the work. Perhaps V’s anarchist utopia is never shown because utopia means no-place and V is, in fact, wrong. Certainly there are panels and excerpts one could use to make this argument, but I am not the one to make it, nor would I really be convinced by that argument. It’s a bit too clever by half, a way of taking the book’s considerable weaknesses and claim them as strengths. Besides, Moore does a far better job in Watchmen of having the character whose worldview is closest to his also be a monster who does something unforgiveable for “the greater good.”

[2] Somehow this authoritarian hellscape on an isolated island nation with limited land and resources also manages to have a hyper-advanced sci-fi surveillance state and all of the middle class comforts of late twentieth century life, but there’s so many bigger problems with the text, we should probably let that one slide.

[3] V’s plan, by-the-by, is implausible within the world Alan Moore has constructed. We’re meant to believe that V, an escaped political prisoner, has somehow managed to amass a huge fortune, a wide network of real estate, hacked into Fate, the central computer that oversees all surveillance and activity within England and designed a meticulous plan to bring down the Government in under 5 years.

[4] Both also try to create analogues for our own time within their world, things that feel both exaggerated and frighteningly real at the same time. Brazil begins with a typographical error leading the State to torture and murder the wrong man, which feels ridiculous until you recall Maher Arar. Nineteen Eighty-Four’s Two Minutes Hate isn’t exactly Talk Radio, but it’s not not Talk Radio.

[5] You could argue that Evey is the protagonist of V and V the mentor figure. I actually think the book is confused about who its main character is. V doesn’t change, so he makes a shitty protagonist. Evey changes but is so thinly rendered and boring you can feel the book wanting to focus more often on V.

179 Comments

This is a righteous takedown, and I agree with a lot of it (as I discuss in this post from way back when.) I think you’re analysis of the book’s misogyny is particularly damning.

I still have more affection for the book than you do, though, Isaac. I don’t think that the Guy Fawkes mask is as much of a knock-out blow as you seem to; symbols often get reinterpreted or reappropriated in different contexts.

I also guess I still find that note Evie finds really moving. Though, of course, in some ways that just makes the book worse, since it turns an extremely eloquent anti-torture appeal into an excuse for torture…I don’t know. Like I said, still conflicted, but I think you’ve convinced me that the book is worse than I’d thought (and I had thought there were serious problems.)

I agree with you about the letter, actually. It’s the one glimmer in the book and it might be on a prose level one of the best thing’s Moore’s done. In the interest of fairness I probably should’ve said that.

Of course symbols can be reconfigured, but this particular one is deeply stupid. Moore and Lloyd take one kind of terrorism and use it as a symbol for another simply because they’re both terrorists and in the early eighties, terrorism was kinda cool. There’s no actual effort to reconfigure the symbol, they just seem to assume that Fawkes makes a good totem for V, but they stood for opposite things. I don’t consider this a knockout punch however, just the most constant evidence of the book’s idiocy. The song is tied for stupidest thing in the whole book with V driving the leader insane by convincing him that the Fate supercomputer (a) loves him and (b) has cheated on him but I didn’t want to try the reader’s patience by detailing every boneheaded thing in the book.

Haven’t had too much time to think about this and haven’t read V for Vendetta in nearly 20 years but I think I agree with Noah. The comic has never bothered me as much because I’ve always viewed it as an adventure comic steeped in superhero tropes. The fact that the mask from the film has been co-opted by some in the Occupy movement sort of makes this reading more important though. It’s a bit like the debate between Black Power and the non-violence movement during the 60s.

The counter argument you represent in the final paragraph does hold water though. I don’t know what Moore’s politics were at the time but there’s some (?) reason to believe that while V started out as a revenge fantasy, it ended up a compromised but nasty portrayal of both fascism and anarchy. V is Judge Dredd for the liberal masses. It depends on how much sophistication you want to attribute to Moore. For comparison’s sake, wouldn’t you say that the one person in From Hell who seems closest to Moore in terms of beliefs is actually William Gull?

“Moore: …Whereas, what I was trying to do was take these two extremes of the human political spectrum and set them against each other in a kind of little moral drama, just to see what works and what happened. I tried to be as fair about it as possible. I mean, yes, politically I’m an anarchist; at the same time I didn’t want to stick to just moral blacks and whites. I wanted a number of the fascists I portrayed to be real rounded characters. They’ve got reasons for what they do. They’re not necessarily cartoon Nazis. Some of them believe in what they do, some don’t believe in it but are doing it any way for practical reasons. As for the central character of the anarchist, V himself, he is for the first two or three episodes cheerfully going around murdering people, and the audience is loving it. They are really keyed into this traditional drama of a romantic anarchist who is going around murdering all the Nazi bad guys.

At which point I decided that that wasn’t what I wanted to say. I actually don’t think it’s right to kill people. So I made it very, very morally ambiguous. And the central question is, is this guy right? Or is he mad? What do you, the reader, think about this? Which struck me as a properly anarchist solution. I didn’t want to tell people what to think, I just wanted to tell people to think, and consider some of these admittedly extreme little elements, which nevertheless do recur fairly regularly throughout human history. I was very pleased with how it came together. And it was a book that was very, very close to my heart.”

It’s pretty clear the book undermines its own message at the end with the bleak final two pages though I think you sort of acknowledge that in your essay.

Not sure what to make of the misogyny accusation. It’s clear prisoners in real life really are sexually assaulted and/ or given cavity searches and the like, but it happens in real life is not really a defense, as an author makes all sorts of choices to accentuate or minimize realism when creating a story, and of course you can’t really say the book is realistic. I think the best defense I can muster is simply to say Moore does seem to care about Evie which is really just an argument that the misogyny is tempered, maybe?

The sequence with the justice statue is just so silly and theatrical I can’t take it seriously enough to say its misogynist.

The medical exam thing I guess would maybe be less damming if these sorts of things also happened to male characters, I guess? V’s own prison sequence is treated as dehumanizing but also empowering.

I think Moore in real life has said he’s a pacifist, though of course like most comic writers he writes stories about people hitting people- so you would never know that from his works. But calling this the leftist Fountainhead seems pretty hyperbolic.

“It does not work as a thriller because we are never as readers in any doubt that V will succeed.”

Isn’t it a given in most hollywood movies that the protagonist will win? Does that make these movies not exciting?

And yeah, of course the deck is stacked in favor of V, it’s really I guess just kind of an edgy pulp story. The villains are pretty much always morons in virtually any pulp story you can imagine, they never just shoot Batman with sniper rifle or nerve gas or whatever, because then the story would be over. The villain can never just shoot Bond when he has him captured.

That’s interesting as to his intentions…but I think Isaac has him dead to rights in saying that he largely failed. Moore is always trying to work with genre tropes and undercut them…and V is a place where I think the genre tropes (violence and misogyny, most notably) kind of kick his ass.

He needed to do more than have rounded fascists and show V murdering people. He needed to have Evey actually challenge V’s ideology effectively, both in words and in actions. He never does that, and as a result I don’t think the book says what he claims it does in that interview.

Don’t you think that would have made for a very banal and moralistic read? Instead he shows us the attractions of power and the pliability of the masses – the way libertarianism got turned into the Tea Party these past few years for example.

“Somehow this authoritarian hellscape on an isolated island nation with limited land and resources also manages to have a hyper-advanced sci-fi surveillance state…..”

I’m not quite sure if you’re being sarcastic with the above statement. His depiction of an island surveillance state has proved to be quite on target.

Like others, it’s been years since I’ve read it. I remember liking it, but that rape and torture sequence you described was quite troubling, needless to say. And the ludicrous reveal that “V” was behind it.

I think Moore to some degree revealed his politics in the brief afterword to the series where he denounced Thatcherism in a quite histrionic way. That’s the only other thing I remember about the whole thing.

Real quick cause they’re about to make
Me turn my phone off:. The book posits that England is the only
nation to have survived a global thermonuclear war. That’s why it’s highly
evolved surveillance state and general middle class lifestyle are preposterous. I wouldn’t care about this that much (world building isn’t my thing) but Moore brags about the plausibility of V’s England in the book’s afterword.

On the narrative tension front, good thrillers make us forget that the hero’s success is almost certainly a foregone conclusion. Or they put us in suspense as to what success actually means. Or they make the cost of success feel real.

Suat, the book is already moralistic and dull. Putting in some kind of actual dialectic wherein V’s constant lecturing could be argued against would probably
make it more interesting.

“Of course symbols can be reconfigured, but this particular one is deeply stupid.”

Yo, I actually think taking an image of theocratic right-wing fervor and re-appropriating it tabula rasa in the service of leftist causes is a particularly brilliant example of detournement. It’s always possible that I am “deeply stupid” or “idio[tic]” though.

I’m not calling people who disagree with me stupid or idiotic. I am pro disagreement. I also don’t think that you can simply take a symbol and say it means something different than what it means and presto-chango, rearrango you’ve succeeded. Also, not that stated creator intent is the be-all and end-all here (i’m actually kind of opposed to reading things through what the creator says about them) but David Lloyd doesn’t seem to think that’s what they’ve done. He says in some of the endmatter that he suggested the Guy Fawkes mask because he thinks Fawkes the historical figure got a bad rap and that blowing up parliament is awesome. Now of course, David Lloyd could’ve been being sarcastic, or could be being stupid and the work could still achieve the thing you’re talking about here, but I don’t see a lot of work within the text itself centered on achieving the kind of detournement you articulate here. Do you? Or is simply by using a symbol that means X to instead mean Y enough?

I’m not British- is anyone here British? A valuable question is what’s the context of the Guy Fawkes mask in British culture? I thought they have a Guy Fawkes day which is sort of Halloween type celebration- not necessarily more relevant to the original event than the Salem witch trials are to a girl dressed up as a witch trick or treating in America?

I admit I’m kind of ignorant about it though, and have no idea if I’m right. Remember this book was originally made just for British audiences.

In the context of the book V has a lot of movie memorabilia and such- he just seems to be dressed as a theatrical character the specific costume doesn’t seem all *that* relevant, though he does reference Guy Fawkes of course.

You’re right. I was hasty in making the comment because I thought your piece was moralizing and I made claims I couldn’t really support.

The only defensible ground that I have to fall back on here is that your critique of it as a symbol of Occupy, Anonymous, and leftist activism today in America is misplaced. How many people do you think identify Guy Fawkes with religious extremism in America today? How many do you think identify him with leftist activism? Moore and Lloyd’s usage of him at the time was sloppy, but events since have made V for Vendetta the primary context for the Fawkes mask in mainstream culture. Fawkes the historical actor takes a back seat. I’m comfortable saying that the creators of V for Vendetta picked an obscure enough image and took advantage of the lack of historical context most people (at least in america) have for that figure to reassign it a new value. Much like many contemporary theorists appropriate old aristocrats and authoritarians for leftist causes (see Nietzsche-Deleuze or Zizek-Lenin), and similarly the Fawkes case (consciously or not) provides us with an interesting commentary on the ability for those of us who don’t insist on privileged representations (including authorial intent) to reinscribe conservative icons in our own projects. Though based on the amount of Orwell that you appealed to I’d understand if you found that somehow distasteful.

I think the idea here is that Guy Fawkes’ reputation is complicated – anarchistic terrorist, Catholic villain, source of religious hatred, popular hero, ritualistic effigy disconnected from religious content etc. Don’t think the reaction was meant to be (exclusively) Guy Fawkes – cool modern day hero. I suppose in that sense, the choice was too complicated for the eventual American audience?

We do get a little of David Lloyd’s opinion about the work, as you note, from the afterward, but I’m wondering if you see the artwork in this visual medium as having any particular effect on the characterization of V? I agree that V for Vendetta is probably irredeemably misogynist, but I feel like David Lloyd’s artwork, which makes V so terrifying, so evil-looking, basically a horror villain, goes some way toward undermining the idea that we’re supposed to root for him. Maybe not far enough.

I think, although you have quite a few valid points, your analysis fails because it assumes that, because V occupies the “hero”/protagonist slot in the book, he’s in the right. Like Suat’s Moore quote says, he gives you the romantically attractive anarchist hero, and then undermines it. I don’t know how anyone can read V’s torture and brainwashing of Evey without coming to the realisation that this guy is a terrifying fanatic who really isn’t any kind of improvement on the fascists (that’s the main thing I didn’t like about the film – it retained the torture/brainwashing sequence faithfully, but deprived it of any apparent purpose or meaning). All he brings (through his, I agree, implausibly ominpotence and omniscience) is chaos and violence. Can the violent imposition of one man’s will ever lead to the kind of anarchy, where everybody cooperates voluntarily, that V talks about?

I’m not an anarchist (I don’t think that kind of voluntary self-government is possible in anything but the smallest of self-contained communities) but I understand Moore is. I suspect he was working through some of the possible implications of anarchism, including some of the approaches to be avoided, when he wrote V. There’s always the possibility that I’ve misinterpreted the book completely and he’s right behind torture and brainwashing if it’s for the right cause – but I’d prefer to think otherwise.

A few years ago, Caro claimed that reading Noah’s negative take on Ghost World made her like Clowes more. Funny thing is that even though I agree with most of Isaac’s points, the piece actually makes me have fonder memories of V for Vendetta. I had no idea that so many people saw V as a despicable figure advocating a shitty system of anti-governance. So much more interesting than being the oppressed hero he’s been made out to be over the years.

I could change my mind once I actually reread the comic though…it might turn out like Swamp Thing.

I’m certainly open to other readings of the text. I’m not a big fan of there being a One True Reading of much of anything. That said, I guess what i would like to see is some actual textual evidence for these other readings of the book.I’m not sure it’s enough to say that V’s actions are clearly abhorrent. All that means is that we the reader find them abhorrent. As I cite in the above, Evey– the closest we have to a conscience in the book– explicitly endorses V’s torture of her as a justifiable mean to the end of her mental/spiritual/whatever freedom. V’s death and eventual “Viking Funeral” are treated heroically within the text as well. All anti-V sentiment in the text comes from the point of view of fascists… etc. and so forth.

I’m open to this reading, though. i think having more readings of something is a good thing.

I also find the idea that Moore changed his mind about his titular character and the series he was writing to be fascinating but I don’t really find much of a case in the text itself that he made the changes he’s talking about. Yes, V gets more complicated and less likeable in the second half. However, the ending of the book echoes the sentiments of the beginning, where the ever-expanding stack of bodies is simply a vehicle for the redemption of England and V is the martyr figure enacting our necessary sins in order to save us. You can practically hear the triumphant strings and brass and his subway car hurtles towards its explosive end.

I’ve argued this out with Noah previously…and provided textual evidence, but I don’t think I have the energy to do it again. The main thing that indicates that the book is self-conscious about V’s actions as being terrible/horrible/negative is the parallels drawn between V and Adam Susan. There’s one episode wherein these parallels are made explicit, but when V takes over “Fate” and starts watching what everyone is doing in order to control it all (part of the evidence Isaac uses above for the book being boring), then, I think it’s pretty clear that V is not really much different from Susan. V tortures Evey “for her own good” and the “good of the many”–but, again, this is pretty clearly the same kind of thing that Norsefire does. (In fact, the experiments performed on the man from Room V that turn him into V are not much different from the “brainwashing” performed on Evey by V…He’s basically just paying it forward, to some degree). The fact that Evey elects not to become a killer, like V, is also something of an indictment of V’s methods (though, I admit, there is some intimation that violence is necessary in order to get to Evey’s “better place.”) I do think there are some ideological problems with the book (Evey forgiving V is something like Sally Jupiter “forgiving” the Comedian…but worse, since Sally never really does forgive Blake. It’s not only unlikely, but offensive, that they would become good buddies in the aftermath)). Nevertheless, the idea that the book promotes anarchy without admitting how anarchy may well end up like fascism just isn’t true. Obviously, there’s something to argue about here, because this is not the first time I’ve read a critique of V from this perspective…but it actually seems fairly obvious to me that the book is not promoting anarchy (or terrorism) as some kind of cure-all without horrific negative side effects. There is a fantasy of “fight the power” here, certainly…but it’s pretty obvious that in “fighting the power” one “becomes the power”–which is hardly an unproblematic solution. I think the book is self-conscious about this…Perhaps the reader is seduced into falling for V’s rhetoric…but I also think that the horrific torturing of Evey works (intentionally) to distance us from V. At that point, the reader is encouraged to hate/criticize/be disgusted by Evey’s torturers. We don’t know who they are yet, obviously, but once the “reveal” occurs, I don’t think we automatically say, “That’s ok then!” Rather, our hatred and disgust gets transferred to V himself. Sure…Evey eventually forgives him, but I don’t think we forget what he did…and in not forgetting, it’s no given we forgive.

I think the parallels with Susan don’t necessarily work the way you want them to; genre always draws parallels between the good guy and the bad guy. Thus all the bad guys who say, “you’re just like me”…but the point is always that they aren’t the same, because good and evil aren’t the same. Again, I think Moore has to fight harder against the genre to get the effects you’re talking about. He does that in Watchmen, but much much less so in V.

And…I mean, how hard would it have been to have someone in the book articulate a critique that stuck?

I haven’t read V in years, but I need to give it another look, I think. I do recall thinking that V was undermined, not only because he’s possibly crazy or because he does some terrible stuff, but also because his attacks are revealed to specifically target those responsible for his imprisonment and torture, making the whole thing a grand revenge scheme, with the side effect of toppling the fascist regime. Or maybe it’s vice versa, and he’s just getting the lucky benefit of vengeance along with a destruction of the evil overlords. Either way, I don’t think I ever thought it was a black and white story of good triumphing over evil.

I’m also interested in the misinterpreting of a work’s message, with a similar example being the movie Fight Club. That film seems to endorse anarchy, but then shows how that anarchy can be exploited and turned into its own version of fascism. But I think most people didn’t really take that message to heart, but just thought it was cool for guys to fight each other. I’m sure there are plenty of other examples of people missing the point; surely somebody just thinks Robocop is a cool robot policeman, right?

The problem the book has difficulty overcoming is the typical “good guy/bad guy” superhero problem, yes. V is the title character…wears a mask, has a secret identity…and thus seems to be a “superhero” (though, in its original form in Warrior, this would have been a little less clear…since it wasn’t a straight superhero magazine). Thus…V seems to be a “superhero” while the fascists are “villains.” At the same time, we get to know our fascists much better as human beings than in most superhero comics…and we get to know V himself much less (almost not at all). This helps offset the “we root for hero-guy!” element a bit.

Anyway…it’s not that “I want” it to work a certain way (as you imply–actually, you say it, not imply it)—it’s that I think it does work that way. Reading it as a pro-anarchy/pro-violence thing that we can then lob grenades at may be fun (in the spirit of hate week and all that), but I don’t think it actually describes the experience of reading the book. On the contrary, it feels like there is an effort to read the book as more simplistic than it actually is in order to make the critic feel/seem smarter. (“Alan Moore didn’t realize how much he was promoting terrorism and anarchy”–This kind of criticism only works if the book actually is promoting terrorism and anarchy—which it isn’t…Foolish Occupiers based on the crappy movie notwithstanding). Unlike most superhero books, the whole thing is not about black/white morality and cheering on the good guys in the sunshine while spitting on the bad guys shrouded in darkness. Elements of that kind of thing do crop up in the book…but it’s not the predominant feeling I get while reading it. If you want to call V a dry-run for Watchmen’s more ambiguous morality…that’s fine…but to call it a failure on these counts seems foolish.

The mere fact that these debates crop up on this site every year or so suggests that the book is not some completely simple-minded “us vs. them”
“good vs. bad” book. The ambiguity of its treatment of V (and others) is precisely what spawns the debate…

And…it’s not Susan who draws the parallel between himself and V (it’s either V himself or an external camera—can’t recall). Yes…if a villain says, “You’re just like me”–it’s a pretty good guess that the book has him say that in order to highlight the fact that the opponents are not the same (“No, Luthor, the difference is I’m Super-strong…and I’m a moral dude!”). If the “hero” says it, on the other hand,…I think that gives us pause (why is he saying it?). If the book simply draws parallels between the two and leaves it to us to draw conclusions…I find it hard to see how the conclusions we’re supposed to draw are opposite of the parallels drawn (why draw them then?)

All of this is to say that the book, to me, clearly intends to make V’s heroism ambiguous at best. At times, it succeeds in making us question V and his morality…At other times, he comes off more the hero… So…maybe the “genre tropes” overpower the attempt to subvert them at times… As in Watchmen, though, Moore trots out the genre tropes in order to interrogate them. Hard to see how to interrogate them at all if they are not on display, to some degree. And the same problems crop up in Watchmen, too (people see Rorschach as cool good-guy despite all the evidence to the contrary)…

We’ve hashed this out here several times before, so I’m going to try to avoid further hashification.

…The main thing that indicates that the book is self-conscious about V’s actions as being terrible/horrible/negative is the parallels drawn between V and Adam Susan…

…but I also think that the horrific torturing of Evey works (intentionally) to distance us from V. At that point, the reader is encouraged to hate/criticize/be disgusted by Evey’s torturers. We don’t know who they are yet, obviously, but once the “reveal” occurs, I don’t think we automatically say, “That’s ok then!”
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Yes. Note how the movie, which shifted from V being for anarchy to the more palatable fighting for freedom, also had V expressing his agonized regret to Evey for the sexual humiliation he subjected her to. Whilst in the comic, he apologized not one whit. For anything he did.

One of the countless ways in which the comic’s V is a chillingly ambivalent figure. (Didn’t the doctors “treating” him in that concentration camp consider they’d driven him insane?)

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…the book, to me, clearly intends to make V’s heroism ambiguous at best. At times, it succeeds in making us question V and his morality…At other times, he comes off more the hero… So…maybe the “genre tropes” overpower the attempt to subvert them at times…
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Indeed; and doesn’t that overpowering remind of how Rorschach, whom Moore more clearly intended to be a creepy figure, nonetheless ended up admired by many?

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steven samuels says:

…that rape and torture sequence you described was quite troubling, needless to say.
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So, a “body cavity search” — something routinely given prisoners, male and female — is now rape? Sure, it’s a disgustingly humiliating procedure, but if the term gets splashed around so freely, doesn’t that “devalue the currency” of actual rape?

Ah, but the More PC-Than-Thou crowd are into pushing this image of Moore — who’s created as richly human, complex, sympathetically-portrayed women characters as anyone*; whose progressive credentials are impeccable — as some slavering pro-rape creep. Because to depict violence against women is to be in favor of violence against women. (Hey, and Agatha Christie must love murder! Look at all the people that get killed in her books!)

But, leftists far prefer to endlessly bicker and fight among themselves, attack those who are not “ideologically pure,” rather than unite against the common enemy.

*Oh, but he’s dared in the comic to feature a nasty, villainous woman, who actually uses her sexuality to manipulate her hapless hubby. Since nothing like that ever happens in real life, here’s further proof of how much Moore hates women!

Oh; one more thing. Of course you have to use the tropes to question them. But at the same time, it seems like if you are trying to use them against themselves, you can succeed…or you can fail.

I think Alan Moore is somebody who is both powerfully attracted to, and powerfully repulsed by, pulp tropes around violence, sex, and power. The balance of that attraction and that repulsion varies from work to work, and is what gives his books a lot of their interest. But…he doesn’t always get it right, and especially in V, I think his sympathy for anarchy and his sympathy for powerful pulp heroes gets him in serious trouble.

For example; your reading, Eric, depends on the possibility that V is insane or evil. But the book constantly presents him as not only good, but really beyond our ability to judge. The crazy pattern on the floor that ends up being carefully constructed, for example; he’s supposed to be smarter than we are, and if that’s the case, how exactly can we deem him insane? Similarly, that scene where the woman doctor asks him to take off his mask — the implication is that his features are unearthly, and not in a bad way. And she, of course, also forgives him for what he does, just like Evey. And he’s immaculately cultured…and, most of all, he removes himself in the end, showing his own nobility and the ultimate purity of his goals.

I don’t deny that Moore is trying to think about the parallels between anarchy and fascism. But his commitment to his good guy/bad guy genre tropes — the way, for example, that his bad guys are made sexual deviants while V is pure and even virginal in his relations with Evey (except for purposes of education I guess) work against the point he’s trying to make, and ultimately undermine him rather than the tropes.

Oh…and I’m never really convinced by the “it sparks discussion so it must be complex” argument. Alan Moore is very accomplished, and V’s an important work in his career. That’s reason enough for folks to talk about it, it seems like…and why can’t differing views be evidence of incoherence on the part of the work, rather than on the part of the critics?

…the crazy pattern on the floor that ends up being carefully constructed, for example; he’s supposed to be smarter than we are, and if that’s the case, how exactly can we deem him insane?
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So, are all crazy people automatically stupider than we are? What about the “savant syndrome” types? Could not V be seen as an utterly cunning, brilliantly manipulative psychopath? (In the movie version I had in my mind when first reading the serialized comics, I always imagined Anthony Hopkins as supplying V’s voice.)

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…and, most of all, he removes himself in the end, showing his own nobility and the ultimate purity of his goals.
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Of all things, V reminds me of a bit in a Mickey Spillane book where his violent hero — tommy-gunning a bunch of Chinese Reds — describes himself as the evil that destroys a greater evil, that the meek may inherit the earth.

V definitely sees himself and his actions as, at best, a “necessary evil.”

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…why can’t differing views be evidence of incoherence on the part of the work, rather than on the part of the critics?
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Sure, they could be; and, they also can be (as in the case of 40% of the American people believing the Earth is less than 10,000 years old) evidence that some people are incapable of seeing the most blazingly obvious truths, no matter how much evidence in their favor is presented.

The actual Guy Fawkes wanted to annihilate the at least somewhat-democratic Parliament, and bring in a burn-the-infidels Catholic dictatorship. In England, he’s certainly been viewed as a villainous figure, a boogeyman yearly burnt in effigy, kids going around asking for money to do so: “Penny for the Guy, sir?”

Thus this, rather than proving that Moore was an idiot for having V wear a Guy Fawkes mask, further clearly shows how ambiguous the character was intended to be.

Just slid from the shelves my trade paperback copy of “V for Vendetta’ for rereading: more “hating the hate” to follow!

Everyone else is hashing out the merits of Isaac’s case, but I want to add: this was really great fun to read. My favourite piece of the hateschrift so far.

My own reading is that V becomes somewhat more ambiguous over the course of the book, but is nowhere near as clearly demented/despicable as Rorschach. Evey’s forgiveness and acceptance of her brutalisation is morally repulsive — V is the ultimate abusive boyfriend. But I still enjoy the book, obnoxious ideology and all.

Anyway, Isaac, you’re neglecting the key element of suspense in the book: what v-word will cap the next chapter? Verbosity? Verificationism? Vulvodynia?

Mike…having someone penetrate you against your will seems like a decent definition of rape. Certainly it qualifies as sexual assault.

I think Moore often handles sexual assault thoughtfully, and I think he is very much a feminist and tries to present, and often succeeds in presenting, sympathetic and nuanced female characters in his work. But if Mark Twain lost the occasional fall with racism (as Ralph Ellison correctly says that he did), then I don’t think it’s crazy to suggest that Moore lost the occasional fall with sexism.

Oh, and as I’ve said before, the morality of cozies is definitely problematic.

I think Milo Manera is going to come up later in the roundtable, FWIW.

“But the book constantly presents him as not only good, but really beyond our ability to judge.”

I think that’s a willful misreading of the book. Other characters are *constantly* judging him, and we’re presented with a series of pretty simple Morality 101 ‘does the end justify the means?’ situations. The movie fucks it up big time by making him far more romantic and caring. The comic book version is horrible. He does abuse Evey. He does brutalise her. I don’t think you’re meant to see her transformation as ‘the truth’, and after it she’s clearly got some form of dissociative mental issue.

The question as to whether this is a clash of ideologies or an insane man taking revenge is also constantly there, being asked.

The comic sets it up as a bunch of mid-level, ordinary bureaucrats who have come to use state power to maintain order in the face of chaos, subject to lots of normal people problems like money worries and careerism … versus a man in a mask who kills without any compunction. It’s the fascists who hesitate before firing, the ‘hero’ who kills people just because it’s easier than walking round them.

Ultimately, V comes to realise that he is not the one to build what comes next, he can only tear down what there is. That ‘imposing anarchy’ is as totalitarian as any other imposed system.

Seeing it as the relentless progression of one narrative, again, is reading against the text. The book retells events from different points of view, it has people reconstructing events after the fact, imposing their own meanings on them.

V for Vendetta isn’t perfect, it’s very clearly made up as it goes along, it starts out as a very obvious ripoff of Theatre of Blood, it makes British Eighties Leftie Error #1 which is to see Thatcher as somehow exactly equivalent to the BNP, the Guy Fawkes-was-a-hero thing is Tea Party levels of nuts. But if you think V’s ‘the hero’, you’re missing the context, which is that with a handful of exceptions British comics – most British heroic narratives – have always been about anti-heroes, not paragons of virtue who we’re meant to believe in. From the real, British, Dennis the Menace to Judge Dredd, we Brits are weaned on *bastards* in our comics. V’s a bastard.

“And…it’s not Susan who draws the parallel between himself and V (it’s either V himself or an external camera—can’t recall).”

I’m not clear what you mean by this Eric, but Moore uses transitional devices all the time linking two things in different spaces and time, its one of his most basic formal devices.

In his writing for comics essays he writes “The important thing is that the reader should not wake up until you want them to, and the transitions between scenes are the weak points in the spell that you are attempting to cast over them. One way or another, as a writer, you’ll have to come up with your own repertoire of tricks and devices with which to bridge the credibility gap that a change in scene represents, borrowing some devices from other writers and hopefully coming up with a few of your own.”

I’m not sure what scene you are referring to, but a mere transitional device wouldn’t be saying much. If this camera thing is something more than that you haven’t made your case.

And Matthew, I think V is killing everyone who knows his secret identity so he can “be a symbol” so his motivation isn’t base revenge. Its been years since I read the book, though.

…My own reading is that V becomes somewhat more ambiguous over the course of the book, but is nowhere near as clearly demented/despicable as Rorschach.
——————-

I’m halfway through rereading the trade paperback, and Rorschach — poor dining habits, creepy monotone voice and all — is a teddy bear compared to V.

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Noah Berlatsky says:

Mike…having someone penetrate you against your will seems like a decent definition of rape. Certainly it qualifies as sexual assault.
——————–

So, everybody who gets a “body cavity search” by the police or looking-for-drugs DEA officers can sue or have them arrested for “sexual assault”? Intent is everything here; those examinations are done to search for hidden weapons/contraband, rather than sexual pleasure (though of course, some nasty types may derive jollies from the act), therefore are legally excusable.

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I think Milo Manara is going to come up later in the roundtable, FWIW.
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Now, there’s someone who deserves every bit of mud flung his way! God, how I loathe him…

Rereading “V for Vendetta,” I was startled (it’d been a while since my last reading, and the ol’ memory’s not what it used to be) how blatantly, from the very first, V is clearly made to be…well, “morally ambiguous” is the understatement of the century.

(For now, I’ll leave off mentioning the many bits in the book which make nonsense of the “Moore the misogynist” malarkey, and just deal with that which shows V was hardly intended as a simply heroic figure.)

Dunno how many here have the “pamphlet” issues to look at. I’ll give page numbers from the trade paperback, but mention “chapters” to indicate which individual issue the examples noted are to be found in.

Chapter 1 – The Villain

In the very first page, our first glimpse of V is as he advances toward his make-up table in the Shadow Gallery. While more innocuous ones will later be depicted, what are the movie posters we see surrounding the dress-up table? Which surely Moore specified in his script? “White Heat,” where Cagney plays a psychotic killer who later self-immolates explosively (recall how V’s remains were sent off). There’s “Murders in the Rue Morgue,” not so related to V but more to the detective who’ll track him down ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Murders_in_the_Rue_Morgue ), and “Son of Frankenstein”; V clearly a Frankenstein’s monster figure.

In page 13, asked by Evey who he is, V responds, “I’m the bogeyman. The villain…”

Chapter 3 – Victims

In page 24, Finch, the decent detective who has repeatedly told the Leader he doesn’t believe in the fascist system, but does his work to help England, describes V’s killing of several security agents: “Whatever their faults, those were two human beings…and he slaughtered them like cattle!”

Page 28: Evey recalls how after the war, “There were riots, and people with guns. … Everybody was waiting for the government to do something… But there wasn’t any government any more. Just lots of little gangs, all trying to take over…” Um, doesn’t that sound like the situation that would result after V overthrows the current regime?

Chapter 4 – Vaudeville

In page 31, V doffs his Guy Fawkes mask for that of Mr. Punch; a murderous, terrifying, damn-near-supernaturally powerful (he beats the Devil!), antiheroic figure. As http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punch_and_Judy points out, “He is a manifestation of the Lord of Misrule and Trickster figures of deep-rooted mythologies.” The “skeletal outline” of Punch tales “…typically involve Punch behaving outrageously, struggling with his wife Judy and the Baby, and then triumphing in a series of encounters with the forces of law and order (and often the supernatural), interspersed with jokes and songs…It is rare for Punch to hit his baby these days, but he may well sit on it in a failed attempt to “babysit”, or drop it, or even let it go through a sausage machine…” This Punch mask will later feature prominently in a terrifying nightmare of Evey’s.

Chapter 6 – The Vision

Pages 43-44: Evey asks V about the prominently-displayed motto in the Shadow Gallery: “Vi veri veniversum vivus vici.” Then she says in return for what he’s done for her, she ought to help him: “I mean that’s the deal, isn’t it?…I want to do something [to help him]…Can’t we make a deal?” V accepts. When Evey asks him who originally said that VVVVV quote, he says, “A German gentleman named Dr. John Faust. He made a deal, too.”

Page 64: Evey is appalled V killed the bishop: “It’s wrong, V…You involved me…killing’s wrong…isn’t it?” He cooly replies, “…As for me involving you, I seem to remember that you were the one anxious to make a deal.” Evey chokes, “I didn’t know you were going to…Oh, Christ, V…” before running from the room. Unruffled, V goes back to his book.

Page 72: Finch (who is sympathetically depicted as a good man trying to do the best he can — V, in his “Vicious Cabaret” lyrics in page 90, describes him as “a policeman with an honest soul” — even if his employer…leaves something to be desired) discovers that over a period of years, V has been killing everyone involved in running the Larkhill “Resettlement” Camp: “Oh God. All those people. That’s monstrous. That’s pure bloody evil.”

Page 75: Delia Surridge, a doctor who’d worked at Larkhill and grown to feel horrible guilt over what she’d done, try to make amends (“I’ve seen her treating little kids…” Finch recalls), awakes to find V by her bed. “…you are going to kill me.” V holds up a hypodermic: “I killed you ten minutes ago. While you were asleep.” (Brrr! That’s one of the most chilling lines I’ve ever read…)

Chapter 11 – The Vortex

Page 81: In her diaries while working at Larkhill, Delia Surridge — a trained doctor, remember; her diagnosis not to be lightly dismissed — describes how the man in room V has reacted to their medical experimentation: “He’s quite insane. Batch 5 seems to have brought on some kind of psychotic breakdown.”

I wonder if our different readings come from the comics we trained on. If you grew up reading superhero comics, which used to present their heroes as unambiguous moral ideals, you might see V for Vendetta in that light and look for ideals in its characters. I was trained on 2000AD, where morally ambiguous heroes are the norm, and morally monstrous heroes not uncommon, so I look for and expect the undermining of ideals. I’ve never read V as a superhero – he’s far more in the tradition of Judge Dredd, which is to take a character type – the violent cop who does what’s necessary in Dredd’s case, the romantic lone freedom fighter in V’s – and test it by coming at it from an unexpected angle and taking it to extremes, so you see it in a different light. An awful lot of Moore’s work works that way.

On the gender politics aspects of the critique. I dislike this kind of ideological criticism, where fiction is expected to provide role models of self-actualised women without character flaws, and anything else is considered “misogynist”. To my mind, the depiction of an abused woman who has grown dependent on her abuser, or of an abusive woman who uses men to gain power and status for herself are far from misogynist, any more than depicting Peter Creedy as an abuser and Conrad Heyer as abused and dependent is misandrist. It’s just depicting characters. I do think there are problematic aspects to Moore’s gender politics – he has an occasional tendency to wallow in male sexual violence against women to show off his feminist credentials – but he doesn’t do that much in V. He does give Delia Sturridge – a concentration camp doctor who experimented on people – a moral redemption of sorts, which he doesn’t give any of the men involved, which strikes me as a bit “sugar and spice”.

Remember that V was originally written for an exclusively British audience. Moore has himself said that he was adressing a familiar trope of British comics and popular culture, the villain as protagonist: the Spider, the Claw, going all the way back to ballads of highwaymen like Dick turpin or indeed to Robin Hood…

I didn’t see V as a superhero. In fact, after reading it several years ago and going to the Wikipedia page, I was surprised that Superhero was one of the genres. Also, I have to agree with Mike. I didn’t see V as a sympathetic figure, especially after the torture part. That part brings to mind cult brainwashing.

I loved this piece. I have plenty of affection for Swamp Thing and Watchmen, but V for Vendetta blows.

A pompous homicidal wank aunting someone with fake homophobic murder, I, just…. if there’s some secret “too clever by half” narrative it’s a wry right-wing parody of empty leftist rhetoric. And there’s not much wry right-wing parody nowadays (of the intentional and non-self-directed variety), so that would be novel. But that’s not what’s going on.

Although I feel sort of like the Moore of your critique, Isaac, since my favorite quote of yours (“Moore gets to have it both ways, making a case that a radical anarchist state would be a really great thing without ever having to imagine for the reader what that world would look like. “) expresses similar sentiments to my own: http://gayutopia.blogspot.com/2007/12/bert-stabler-glory-and-hole.html But yes, thank you, I agree with your criteria and your conclusion. Thank you.

[…] Is ;V for Vendetta ;the worst graphic novel of all time? Theatre director and writer ;Isaac Butler thinks so. “It’s a competently made, terrible, hateful failure on its own terms that has, sadly, had some influence, particularly on the radical left, who really should know better by now,” he writes. “It manages to be brazenly misogynist, horrifically violent, and thuddingly dull all at the same time.” ;[The Hooded Utilitarian] […]

In Watchmen, yes, the ambiguity is there. Even if his moral law and his sadism converge in Veidt, he’s hardly off the hook, either diegetically or meta-narratively. But I gotta say that in V it feels like having your humanism and eating it too.

I wonder if our different readings come from the comics we trained on. If you grew up reading superhero comics, which used to present their heroes as unambiguous moral ideals, you might see V for Vendetta in that light and look for ideals in its characters. I was trained on 2000AD, where morally ambiguous heroes are the norm, and morally monstrous heroes not uncommon, so I look for and expect the undermining of ideals. I’ve never read V as a superhero – he’s far more in the tradition of Judge Dredd, which is to take a character type – the violent cop who does what’s necessary in Dredd’s case, the romantic lone freedom fighter in V’s – and test it by coming at it from an unexpected angle and taking it to extremes, so you see it in a different light. An awful lot of Moore’s work works that way.
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I didn’t think of the “British comics factor” there…an outstanding point! Richly added to by Jemima Cole’s “From the real, British, Dennis the Menace to Judge Dredd, we Brits are weaned on ‘bastards’ in our comics. V’s a bastard.”

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On the gender politics aspects of the critique. I dislike this kind of ideological criticism, where fiction is expected to provide role models of self-actualised women without character flaws, and anything else is considered “misogynist”. To my mind, the depiction of an abused woman who has grown dependent on her abuser, or of an abusive woman who uses men to gain power and status for herself are far from misogynist, any more than depicting Peter Creedy as an abuser and Conrad Heyer as abused and dependent is misandrist. It’s just depicting characters.
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Realistically complex characters. But then in radical-feminist-land, when a woman says “no,” it means utterly, irrevocably “no,” not — as one woman psychologist mentioned in her book — a false denial, because she doesn’t want to be thought of as “easy.” (Needless to say though, a “no” should still be taken at face value.) And in radical-feminist-land, if a husband slaps a woman once, she’ll instantly lose all love for him, walk out with the kids and start a fine new life on her own. Never mind that — as detailed in “Women Who Love Too Much” — some unfortunates believe that getting beaten on a regular basis is part of “love” (as taught by the examples of Mummy and Daddy), and they can only love someone who is abusive; or manage to still love despite the abuse. “He’s always so sorry afterward…”

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I do think there are problematic aspects to Moore’s gender politics – he has an occasional tendency to wallow in male sexual violence against women to show off his feminist credentials…
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An excellent point; consider the “Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” series of books, whose left-wing, feminist author rubbed readers’ faces into heinous violence against women, that we should be reminded how awful it is.

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Noah Berlatsky says:

”I dislike this kind of ideological criticism, where fiction is expected to provide role models of self-actualised women without character flaws, and anything else is considered “misogynist”.”

You have set your straw man righteously on fire…but Isaac doesn’t say anything like that.
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Then how come the countless accusations of “misogyny” (how lightly that bit of character assassination is flung! But then, if you’re on the side of the angels, everyone else is a devil) by him and others, here and in “Watchmen”-related HU threads? Consider the countless words of outrage about how dare Sally Jupiter feel any affection whatsoever for the Comedian (never mind that she’s shown as not very bright and rather weak, except when it comes to protecting her daughter), and how “misogynist” all that is.

And…

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isaac says:

…we have Helen Heyer. Helen becomes a regular presense in the third act of the book, as the (oddly fragile given that it’s supposed to be frighteningly all-powerful) society crumbles. The wife of a high-ranking fascist, Helen tries to maneuver her husband into the role of Leader by sexually manipulating his colleagues. She also refuses him sex. Helen is a classic misogynist caricature, simultaneously frigid and a whore, using her body to get ahead.
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Yes, to depict — as part of the exceedingly wide and varied cast of characters in the book — a type that actually exists, and is hardly freakishly rare, is a “misogynist caricature.” Because only “self-actualised women without character flaws” are acceptable to the PC crowd.

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Noah Berlatsky says:

Oh, and as I’ve said before, the morality of cozies is definitely problematic.
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Oh? Like in, how dare Miss Marple get that nice murderer arrested? (Certainly many victims in “cozy” mysteries deserved to get killed; but in order to create a wide pool of suspects, it helps if the “body in the library” was a mean and nasty type, who’d make enemies wherever they went.)

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AB says:

…In V, there’s a c-story about murderous gangs poised to sow misery and chaos as soon as the Fascist fist unclenches.

(This has an actual historic parallel: the Italian Fascists’ near elimination of the Mafia from Sicily was totally reversed after the Allied invasion.)
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On the other side, FDR’s guys actually made a deal with the American Mafia, to keep Nazi spies and saboteurs off the docks…

“Yes, to depict — as part of the exceedingly wide and varied cast of characters in the book — a type that actually exists, and is hardly freakishly rare, is a “misogynist caricature.” Because only “self-actualised women without character flaws” are acceptable to the PC crowd.”

That’s a classic misogynist excuse. Rappers use it all the time when confronted about misogyny in their lyrics. “Well women like that really exist in the hood!” It’s bullshit rationalizing for them, and it’s bullshit rationalizing when you do it too. You’re better than that, Mike.

On a different tangent, I can’t help but notice something. 1984 and Brazil both end tragically whereas V for Vendetta sees the realization of V’s plan (without us seeing the conclusion, as you point out).

While I love 1984 and Brazil (and the Russian antecedent, We) of course their conclusions are depressing and I would much rather see the authoritarian government deposed. The question arises how can one write a story that doesn’t devolve into “agree with me or get blown up” when confronted by an authoritarian government?

What I’m saying is I can’t help but think that Lowry or Winston might have succeeded had they resorted to violence.

This isn’t to say a peaceful revolution in reality is impossible, because the Velvet Revolution among others demonstrated that it is possible. The question is in making a fictional story interesting for its duration when the main character is essentially powerless in the face of authoritarian power yet achieves victory. (I should note I am attempting to do so, and it has proven challenging, as you can see with my thoughts here.)

I’d highly recommend William Taubman’s biography of Khruschev. Among other things, it chronicles how Russia peacefully moved from a deranged homicidal totalitarian regime to a garden variety, still unpleasant but by no means as bad as it used to be, authoritarian state.

I think genre and narrative conventions can really limit the imagination when it comes to this sort of thing. There is no absolute totalitarian state, and the options for overturning a bad government are really pretty varied — from violence, to serious organized peaceful resistance, to rejiggering of power. And the options aren’t just freedom and totalitarianism — generally, in most states (including ours) you end up somewhere in the middle.

Fascinating discussion. I disagree with the main thrust of Isaac’s critique for reasons that the other British commentators here have given. (I’ve been discussing the anti-heroes of 2000AD with Douglas Wolk recently so the topic is pretty fresh in my mind: http://dreddreviews.blogspot.com/2012/09/brothers-of-blood.html)

But as is clear from that interview with Moore, helpfully cited by Ng Suat Tong, V started out as one thing and became something else. It began as a super-stylish pulpy romp, appearing in six-page monthly installments in STARK black and white (without lines around the word balloons, even). It was 1982, Thatcher was still in her FIRST term, and the innovations of the work more than outweighed its derivative or implausible elements. It’s quite hard to recapture, now, the thrill of reading V, then; but I recall feeling the excitement of discovery with each episode, knowing that Moore and Lloyd were pushing at the boundaries of what could be done in British comics, before my very eyes.

But it ended very differently, almost eight years later. By this time it had become the “other” graphic novel by “the creator of Watchmen,” freighted with post-Watchmen levels of expectation, and repackaged according to the normative tastes of a different national audience: a colorized monthly of twenty-or-so pages per installment.

For a project that turns out to be roughly the page equivalent of a year-long 12 part mini-series, eight years is a ridiculously long time from inception to execution, and the creative techniques and attitudes of the writer had obviously transformed considerably over those years.

IMO then, the flaws in V are largely a function of the exigencies of the popular serial form, and the particularly vexed circumstances of V’s significantly interrupted publication history. Depending on one’s perspective, the result is (at best) a damaged masterwork – and (at worst), an occasionally incoherent mess. Personally, I’ve always found the last quarter of the book disappointing (Isaac didn’t mention Finch’s “enlightenment through acid” sequence – surely one of the lazier moments in all of Moore’s canon) and suspect that Moore was simply feeling less inspired by V after the imposition of a five-year publishing hiatus, over the course of which he had developed other interests.

Of course, that is just speculation. But it’s a fact that V was an interrupted project, and I think very few such creative projects could emerge undamaged from such a history. The result, I think, is a book that is really two quite different books spliced together and spray-painted with color for re-sale on the American market in a way that can make it hard to see the join. But that fundamental incoherence is there, and it gives Isaac’s critique some purchase.

Moore’s Marvelman/Miracleman (the first episode of which appeared alongside the first episode of V in Warrior #1 – yes, it was an exciting time to be reading British comics) is similarly hamstrung. It is, IMO, both better than V, and worse – better in that Moore’s original conception survives the long, strange, trip that it took to bring out the damn thing, but worse in that he had no consistent artistic collaborator, no David Lloyd to help create the illusion of seamlessness through the nightmarish transitions between publishers and markets. The early six-page installments featured some lovely black and white art by Garry Leach, filled with fabulous use of zipatone, and which adapted even less well to standard US color-monthly format.

Alex, I’ve been following Libya and Syria more or less. I don’t know how well violence has ultimately worked in either case. In Libya, American intervention has apparently led to an extremely unstable government and a huge potential mess. In Syria, it sounds like there are atrocities on both sides (though the Assad regime is worse) and lots and lots of people dead. The whole thing seems to suggest more that some problems are really intransigent than that violence leads to righteousness and peace, as far as I can tell.

One thing I will agree on is Helen Heyer…she is a misogynist stereotype. I do think though that there is actually some clever feminism in V. The fascists in power are an all-male boys club (I don’t think that’s an accident)…and their violent mirror in V, also male. If there’s hope it’s in Evey (a woman). One could argue that Helen is forced into using her sexuality to gain power since she is denied any kind of power in the patriarchal society which surrounds her (just as Rosemary Almond turns to stripping as her only option in a society which defines women as either whore or virgin/wife. She loses her role as wife and is forced into the alternative). In Rosemary’s case, I do think it is portrayed as something she is forced into by fascist/patriarchal society (the two are linked…) In Helen’s case though she really does just come across as stereotypical dragon lady with no depth… so…there’s a hit by Isaac. I’ll admit it.

“Yes, to depict — as part of the exceedingly wide and varied cast of characters in the book — a type that actually exists, and is hardly freakishly rare, is a “misogynist caricature.” Because only “self-actualised women without character flaws” are acceptable to the PC crowd.”

That’s a classic misogynist excuse. Rappers use it all the time when confronted about misogyny in their lyrics. “Well women like that really exist in the hood!” It’s bullshit rationalizing…
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There certainly does seem with rap a “school” in which all women are “bitches” and “ho’s.” I’m sure those rappers could accurately say that there are women like that in in the ‘hood. Where their misogyny (whether real or feigned) comes in, is that virtually ALL the women in their lyrics are of those two types.

Is that the case in “V for Vendetta”? Hardly. There’s a wide variety of women there. (Indeed, even more so than in “Watchmen,” “the masses” are vividly depicted, and how banal and unpleasant they often are, making one doubt V’s high hopes for them. When V sabotages the video-surveillance cameras, one hausfrau idiotically says to another, “Won’t seem the same, I used to like the way them little cameras went forwards and backwards…” When a woman gets shot for looting, a guy rages, they “shot the poor cow…just as if she was a Paki!” Making it seem the speaker considers Pakistanis — not that there are any left alive in this England — getting shot par for the course, but for a white woman, that’s an outrage.)

Moreover, Moore created the Heyer character to show, well; let’s hear how V puts it:

“Authority allows two roles: the torturer and the tortured; twists people into joyless mannequins that fear and hate…

“Authority deforms the rearing of their children, makes a cockfight of their love…”

…And then we move to Helen Heyer in the bath, a lengthy scene where she contemptuously treats her servile, towel-carrying hubby, saying “You’re quite a successful young man, Conrad. If your success wasn’t entirely due to my efforts, I might even fancy you.” Then is off to bed, making it clear his attentions would not be welcome: “I expect I shall be asleep when you come up.” And shuts off the light, leaving him in the bathroom in the dark.

The scene making it clear that Moore made Helen Heyer such a ballbusting B-word not to show “how rotten women are,” but as an example of how living under authoritarianism can warp romantic relations.

Recall also how, in his great televised critique of the human race’s sorry record (pages 115-6 of the trade paperback) V criticizes spousal abuse “…I am reliably informed that you always hurt the one you love…the one you shouldn’t hurt at all.”

Further, is not Helen Heyer an example of how some power-hungry women, in particularly male-dominated societies — whether ancient Rome and Egypt, or Renaissance Italy — seek and wield power by manipulating sons, husbands, scheming to make the proxies in their sway ever more powerful? Why, as the tale goes on, HH is planning for servile Conrad to replace the Leader!

(I see that, whilst I’ve been pecking at the keyboard with two fingers, eric b has posted a similar comment to that made in my last paragraph.)

Mike, the problem is that to show those things he uses really stale misogynist boilerplate. You can’t use a blackface caricature and say you’re using it to show how society deforms people unless you’re putting in a lot of work and a lot of thought — and even then it’s often dicey. For me, the nail in the coffin is what Isaac notes; at the end of the comic she is set up to be gang raped, and it’s presented as just deserts, as far as I can tell. She’s a misogynist female stereotype, and she is punished for it in the stereotypical misogynist way.

As Eric says, I think Moore does make thoughtful points about fascism and gender in the book, and as you say he does have other interesting and sympathetic female characters. But Helen is a disaster…and the relationship between V and Evey is also I think, as Isaac says, really problematic.

He does much, much better with gender issues in Swamp Thing and Watchmen (and in Promethea too, though I don’t like that for other reasons.) He just didn’t manage it in V, IMO.

She’s a misogynist female stereotype, and she is punished for it in the stereotypical misogynist way.

The interesting thing this that the Heyers are paralleled almost exactly by the Almonds. Derek Almond (I called him Peter Creedy earlier – a misidentification as I didn’t have the book handy) is a stereotypical abusive husband, and he’s “punished” by being killed by V. This attracts no adverse comments because making male characters bad in stereotypical ways and then killing them is pretty much the basis of genre fiction.

Helen Heyer is him, but female. She abuses her husband to the point of pathetic dependence for the sake of her own power, which is exactly what Almond does to his wife. The only difference is, as Mike says, that Almond has a position in the government in his own right because he’s a man, and Helen has to gain power by proxy because women are excluded from roles in government. And, of course, Rosemary Almond, the dependent, abused wife who resorts to violence against someone other than her abuser, is presented as a more sympathetic character than Conrad Heyer, the dependent, abused husband who etc and so on.

I’m not going to claim any great nuance in the portrayal of either couple – they’re supporting characters, and drawn in broad strokes, and the charge of stereotyping is not unreasonable – but they balance each other as far as gender bias is concerned. Objecting to one while taking the other entirely for granted is surely sexism?

…The fascists in power are an all-male boys club (I don’t think that’s an accident)…and their violent mirror in V, also male. If there’s hope it’s in Evey (a woman).
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Yes. And the Leader is killed by a woman!

Though at the end of the “Watchmen” comic, Laurie told Dan that for future crimefighting she wanted an outfit that protected her better, with leather; and also to carry a gun. As someone noted in an HU thread, is this possibly not an indication she might — at least somewhat — be influenced by her despised, smiley-button-wearing Daddy?

And Evey has refused to kill; yet in the last panel of chapter 9, her mouth twists in a V-like smile; donning his threads and mask, she rescues Finch’s assistant, then brings him into the Shadow Gallery.

What’s next? Will she “free” him through mental and physical torment as V so harshly did to her?

Oops, I see that Noah’s popped in whilst I wrote the above. Must…respond…

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Noah Berlatsky says:

Mike, the problem is that to show those things he uses really stale misogynist boilerplate. You can’t use a blackface caricature and say you’re using it to show how society deforms people unless you’re putting in a lot of work and a lot of thought — and even then it’s often dicey. For me, the nail in the coffin is what Isaac notes; at the end of the comic she is set up to be gang raped, and it’s presented as just deserts, as far as I can tell. She’s a misogynist female stereotype, and she is punished for it in the stereotypical misogynist way.
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You could cram “misogynist” into every other word, and it still wouldn’t make Moore or the book or the character qualify.

I guess no writer had better ever feature a black criminal, or one who is not-very-bright, in their works. Because that’s a racist stereotype, and even if a massive amount of explaining is expended (“and even then it’s often dicey”) about how those characters are “victims of society” — denied opportunity, education — some will always condemn the writer as racist, using racist stereotypes, in a racist work, making racist arguments in a racist fashion. Racist racist racist racist racist!

Relating to that other theme of “Moore the rape-loving writer,” some excerpted 2012 entries from the online journal ( http://greygirlbeast.livejournal.com/ ) of the brilliantly talented Caitlín R. Kiernan:

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July 25th

…the same individual who accused me of being a racist for using the word “exotic” in Silk condemned me that same day for the rape of Nuala by the Lop in The Dreaming #48 (“Scary Monsters,’ May ’00)*….When that issue of The Dreaming came out, there was noise from a few people who felt I’d crossed a line, writing the rape scene (and who were of the opinion, too, that it didn’t matter that Nuala immediately killed the rapist).

Under the guise of feminism, near as I could tell, the logic ran something like this: Writing rape scenes contributes to media normalization of rape and contributes to rape culture and therefore to actual rape itself. You write a rape scene, you may as well have committed the crime in real life. Which, of course, is precisely akin to blaming The Dark Knight Rising for James Eagan Holmes attack on that theater in Aurora, Colorado.

It works this way, folks who are too stupid to be allowed to read: Authors write about the real world, even when we are writing fantasy. In the real world, rape occurs. It is one of the great evils humanity can perpetrate upon humanity (rape against women and men), and, as such, it has a rightful and profoundly important place in literature, which seeks to examine and understand humanity. Or we can begin removing all manner of books from the shelves right now, beginning with those original faerie tales and mythologies, and proceeding to some of the greatest novels of the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries. Shall we begin with The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, Let the Right One In, and, oh, hey, The Color Purple? The individual in question would likely say we should. Fortunately, she is just another twidiot, and there are smart people who fight censorship. If you don’t want to read a book with a rape scene/s, do some research beforehand, and you can make an informed choice to avoid them.

And, if it means anything (and it may not), I was raped in 1992. It was never reported to the police. I was too afraid to do so. It just happened, in the dressing room of a club where I was dancing. That scene with Nuala, which I wrote seven years later, what I was doing is called catharsis, working through my fear, facing and killing my fear. Learning to live with it, even though I would always be haunted by that night. Understanding closure is a fantasy, and the best we can do is refuse to allow fear to crush and blind us and render us cripples. Is that TMI, and do you stand offended and aghast at my public admission? Then fuck you. And, also, see Tori Amos’ “Me and a Gun”, et al. Oh, and I don’t buy that nonsense about “retraumatization,” either, unless we’re talking about an actual, real-world reoccurrence of the incident that created the first trauma.

Well, so I wrote about it today after all. Bully for me.

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August 2

Last week, I wrote about being accused of racism and sexism, via Silk and The Dreaming (yeah, ancient fucking history, the both). Because I’d written about a Vietnamese girl and Vietnamese stamps, because of the rape of Nuala, the Cultural Appropriation and Gender Patrol Beast raised its shaggy head and gazed in my direction. It sees us all sooner or later, squinting its myopic, piggy squint. It points a finger and makes that sound the pod people made in the 1978 remake of Invasion of the Body Snatchers.

Because it is essentially impossible for an author, especially an author of fantasy and science fiction, to appease both the cultural appropriation crowd and the crowd crying out for greater diversity (recall I was accused of “whitewashing” in The Red Tree, because there were no people of color, even though I’m not supposed to write about people of color because that would constitute cultural appropriation). You see that, right? That the Art Police can’t have it both ways?

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See also her July 20th and August 5th entries…

…Fine “The interesting thing this that the Heyers are paralleled almost exactly by the Almonds” point, Patrick!

“Well…that was the bit where, I could get behind what he does to Evey – this is probably telling far too much about me – I could get behind that far more than I could get behind killing people. Because it seemed to me that even though, yes, he was actually torturing Evey, this was in his own mad way, an attempt to heal her. An attempt to push her to a point where she has to wake up to herself as an individual with its own will and own wants and destiny that is not just part of the carpeting of the world, but is a person, is a fully human being. And yes, he does use rather extreme methods. I suppose what I was doing was if I were to actually go-around and imprison all the people that I wanted to mentally and spiritually set free, and subject them to torture for a couple of months, I’d probably get locked up, wouldn’t I? Nobody would understand that one. Whereas, if I put it in a comic then I can to some degree take the reader vicariously through the same experiences and give them the same revelations without risking a jail sentence which is one of the delights of fiction.”

Patrick. No…the thing about sexism (and this is often confusing to people, I know) is that it’s unequal. It treats people differently. That’s how it works in society.

There isn’t a dominant history of male caricature which presents someone as evil and selfish and sexualized because they are male. There is such a history for women. Being aware of that and responding to it with intelligence rather than simply reproducing it is the sign of a decent artist. Regurgitating it without much thought doesn’t make you a horrible person, but it does mean that you’re regurgitating misogynist stereotypes without thinking them through…and therefore that you’ve created a work which is in some ways misogynist.

As Isaac says, the use of violence in V is also fairly dunderheaded and rote. It doesn’t get gendered when it’s directed against men because those pulp tropes aren’t gendered in the same way.

There are various ways that Helen’s sexuality and manipulativeness could have been thought through or dealt with in ways which pushed back against the tropes that she’s constructed out of. Moore could have provided us with some sense of why she views her sexuality the way she does; he could have shown her learning something from her experiences. That wouldn’t have had to make her sympathetic, necessarily, but it could have made her more than the sum of her tropes. But he did none of that; he just has her being a nightmare misogynist stereotype, and then he fantasizes revenge on her by having her gang raped. The response “well, women are like that” is really, really unconvincing, not to mention depressing, and the plea, “well there are bad men in the book as well,” is also not very effective.

Though I will point out that the book is extremely eager to link fascism to sexual deviance and to convict the male fascists of failing to be men. The misogyny directed against Helen is part of a gendered world in which femininity and being feminized are both treated with contempt and scorn. There’s some pushback (most notably in the note from the lesbian which Evey reads, perhaps), but the gendered politics for both men and women tend to mimic the fascism that they claim to be critiquing. Again, this is something that Moore handled much better in later books. I just don’t think he was totally in control of his pulp material at this point in his career.

Mike, I actually agree with you that rape is a feminist issue, and that writing about it can often be a feminist act. “I Spit On Your Grave” is one of my favorite movies, more or less for that reason. And, as I said, Moore often is very thoughtful about feminist issues. He just doesn’t manage it in this case.

“I guess no writer had better ever feature a black criminal, or one who is not-very-bright, in their works. Because that’s a racist stereotype, and even if a massive amount of explaining is expended (“and even then it’s often dicey”) about how those characters are “victims of society” — denied opportunity, education — some will always condemn the writer as racist, using racist stereotypes, in a racist work, making racist arguments in a racist fashion. Racist racist racist racist racist!”

I said “often” dicey, not always. But flirting with racist stereotypes can leave you validating racist stereotypes in some cases, even if that isn’t your intention. Making one of your characters a dragon lady and then gleefully arranging for her gang rape may, possibly, end up being more misogynist than you necessarily intended. If you use charged material, you can end up getting zapped. It’s not clear to me why that’s even moderately controversial.

“The interesting thing this that the Heyers are paralleled almost exactly by the Almonds. Derek Almond (I called him Peter Creedy earlier – a misidentification as I didn’t have the book handy) is a stereotypical abusive husband, and he’s “punished” by being killed by V. This attracts no adverse comments because making male characters bad in stereotypical ways and then killing them is pretty much the basis of genre fiction.”

I think you’re right about the parallel…but I think it serves mostly to show how weak the writing is in the Almonds marriage, rather than being a sort of get-out-of-misogyny free card in terms of Helen. They’re both stereotypical pulp situations which aren’t handled with any particular flair or intelligence. The Almonds arc is tedious and predictable; Helen is misogynist. But they both show Moore unable to transcend the pulp tropes he’s manipulating and supposedly critiquing. Again, I think he does better in other works…but that makes his failures here more glaring, not less.

Its funny in contrast to V that Moore references “hippy fascism” in the 1969 League (squares are sent to concentration camps in America), and dropping acid just makes Mina nuts, it doesn’t enlighten her.

(Unacceptable wise old white-bearded Oriental stereotype) “Truly, this feminism has made the scales fall from your eyes, my son…! Awakened you to what few others ever realize…”

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There isn’t a dominant history of male caricature which presents someone as evil and selfish and sexualized because they are male.
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Why bring in “caricature”? There’s plenty of real-life tendency to see males as prone to being “evil and selfish and sexualized because they are male.”

We may not idealize women as vessels of purity, innocence, and everything that is Good as much as the Victorians did, yet men routinely get harsher prison sentences than women for the same crimes, it’s taken for granted that when the Aged Parents become decrepit, it’ll be one of the daughters who’ll sacrifice her life to care for them; men don’t give up their careers when Baby comes along and devote themselves to wiping runny noses and changing diapers, it’s women who routinely do so. When writing “The Exorcist,” William Peter Blatty briefly considered making the possessed child a little boy, and as swiftly rejected it, little girls being “sugar and spice and everything nice” and boys nasty, grubby little things.

Not to mention — as Patrick Brown noted — how “Cannon fodder is gendered male,” how men are considered more disposable, from “women and children first!” on lifeboats to women soldiers not being put on the front lines, because while the public may not be happy about “our boys” losing their lives in war, women coming home in body bags would be too shocking to the public.

In humor there is a history of jabs at the rolling-pin-wielding shrew, nasty mother-in-law, the dumb blonde. (Which reminds of the crass, double-entedre-laden — “My melons are falling out!” — sitcom which Moore/Lloyd feature as part of Fascist Telly, one of the many ways in which sexism is actually attacked in the book; not that you can win with the PC brigade.) Yet, there is also the hoary tradition of the lecherous boss chasing his secretary around the desk, men falling idiotically over themselves, lavishing expensive gifts, upon some haughty, bosomy bimbo.

And, talk about a double standard! All this fuss and outrage is made over one woman who is a nasty conniver, how depicting such a type fuels the fires of woman-hating.

But, how come these sexism-hating legions aren’t up in arms over the hordes of males in the book who are violent, greedy, lustful assholes? Could it be that this is a “hiding in plain sight” stereotype, arousing no outrage because it’s taken for granted as The Way Things Are?

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There is such a history for women. Being aware of that and responding to it with intelligence rather than simply reproducing it is the sign of a decent artist.
Regurgitating it without much thought doesn’t make you a horrible person, but it does mean that you’re regurgitating misogynist stereotypes without thinking them through…and therefore that you’ve created a work which is in some ways misogynist.
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Yes, because Moore is such a thoughtless, stereotype-spattering case like Johnny Ryan. He should’ve said “To hell with the contract and deadlines, David! We’re going to devote a whole chapter to explaining how Helen Heyer became so…unpleasant. Starting with a child trying to win her emotionally-distant father’s love…”

Not that even such an effort would satisfy some; so, let’s better have all women be pure, noble, stalwart; as idealized as those glowing-faced peasants and factory workers in Communist propaganda posters marching towards a bright Red tomorrow.

Of course, when Moore has such a huge portion of the males in the book be “evil and selfish and sexualized,” no work to avoid regurgitating misandrist stereotypes without thinking them through is demanded; there’s no clamoring against that bit of stereotyping…

Pallas, none of it is thought crimes. But V is very interested in demonstrating that its fascist men are unmanly in various ways…and I think relatedly misogynist. I’m not really clear why the first is supposed to mitigate or negate the second; on the contrary, I think it’s of a piece with his general inability to undermine or think through his pulp tropes.

In Watchmen, sexual deviance and femininity are treated much differently and much more sympathetically (again, with the exception of the letter to Evie). I think Moore personally is very much committed to queer rights. But the book works the way it works…again, I think in some ways despite himself in this instance.

Patrick, the question of whether cannon fodder or nameless evil are gendered male is actually pretty interesting. I think maleness is (as you suggest) often erased, or doesn’t register. But that’s not a sign of sexism against men; it’s a sign that men are the default, which is a way of presenting maleness as normal. In this case, in particular, it means that maleness is not seen as culpable or criminal in itself; there are evil men in the book, but are they evil because they are men the way Helen is evil because she’s a women? It seems more often that they are evil because they aren’t manly *enough” — their evil tied to their sexual weaknesses or deviance, which in turn are used to present them as contemptible.

There is also in the book as Eric says an effort to critique the gendered male-supremacy of fascism…which I think is definitely worth doing, but which is undermined by the misogyny (against both women and femininity) of the book itself, it seems to me.

And Mike, appealing to what sort of person Moore is really misses the point. He’s a smart, thoughtful, and often brilliant artist. But even smart, thoughtful, and brilliant people can be sexist sometimes. Lincoln said a lot of racist things in his day, too. The doesn’t invalidate his life…but his life doesn’t make the racist things he said not racist.

Along those lines…that quote from Moore is disturbing, and I think it backs up a lot of what Isaac says about the book. But I think it’s an attitude and a morality that Moore actively disputes in much of his other work (Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow? is probably as opposed to centralized paternalism as it’s possible for a superhero story to be.) Moore’s a complicated guy and his art struggles with these issues throughout his career. I don’t think the fact that he fails on occasion makes him a bad human being. It just makes him a human being, period.

“But V is very interested in demonstrating that its fascist men are unmanly in various ways…and I think relatedly misogynist”

Well, maybe. But you could read it as “debunking the sexual myth of the fascist patriarchy” couldn’t you? That its showing the government people as hypocrits when it comes to gender, “closeted” if you will. In public, they are manly, in private they play with dolls or molest young girls?

When you wrote about Twin Peaks you said “Moreover, the whiteness in Twin Peaks is undercut and doubled by its own queerness.”

What you didn’t say was “The serial killer’s evil is associated with queerness, how homophobic!”

These sorts of analyses are problematic because its seems fairly easy to make anyone look like a cretin, i think. You just pull the evidence that fits your case (Bob dances to show tunes, Leland was probably molested as a young boy by the man who said “play with fire with me”). Then you dismiss anything that doesn’t match you case (the lesbian scene in V or the woman who murders the fascist leader in V or whatever)

That’s not to say I don’t think there’s some use to this sort of criticism I just think it’s problematic.

I didn’t dismiss the lesbianism; I said it pushed against the other stuff. I don’t think it quite balances it out, but that’s not dismissing it. As I said earlier, I still find the letter really moving, and it’s one of the main reasons I don’t see V as the worst comic ever and/or am ambivalent about it rather than disliking it.

I mean, any argument about a work marshals evidence. I don’t know why it’s more difficult or problematic in this case than any other. In Twin Peaks, I actually think that the argument that it’s homophobic is a reasonable one. I think the way it uses homophobic tropes is revealing about those tropes, but the point of my argument was not that Lynch was queer-friendly, necessarily. On the contrary, I was saying that he used queer tropes to privilege “reality” as a trope in a way that I wasn’t necessarily altogether enamored with.

I think Moore is in fact definitely trying to critique notions of fascist manliness and fascist gender relations. But he’s also really enamored with/enjoying using pulp tropes which share many of those gendered assumptions. As a result, he ends up attacking fascist manliness in large part by accusing it of being unmanly…and then figuring that unmanliness as itself corrupt and evil. Which links up uncomfortably with the visceral (I think) disgust he expresses for Helen and her (unmanned) husband.

I don’t think Moore is a cretin. I think he’s a really smart guy working with difficult material…and I think he got tripped up in V. He succeeds much better in other works.

[…] “V for Vile” is a thought-provoking essay laying into V for Vendetta, explicating its various fascist, misogynistic, and manipulative goals. You may not agree with all of it or even most of it, but you will agree that it changes your interpretation of a classic graphic novels. […]

[…] “V for Vile” is a thought-provoking essay laying into V for Vendetta, explicating its various fascist, misogynistic, and manipulative goals. You may not agree with all of it or even most of it, but you will agree that it changes your interpretation of a classic graphic novels. […]
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What a noxious pile of bullshit; all you have to do is assert on the Web a mass of grotesque distortions, and it’s taken for granted that the work being slammed is indeed loaded with “various fascist, misogynistic, and manipulative goals,”

Critical thinking is as dead as the public conscience…

—————————-
Noah Berlatsky says:

It seems more often that they are evil because they aren’t manly *enough” — their evil tied to their sexual weaknesses or deviance, which in turn are used to present them as contemptible…

…But V is very interested in demonstrating that its fascist men are unmanly in various ways…and I think relatedly misogynist. I’m not really clear why the first is supposed to mitigate or negate the second; on the contrary, I think it’s of a piece with his general inability to undermine or think through his pulp tropes.
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Yes, Moore is such a shallow thinker! That he doesn’t follow the PC “party line” and load his work with simplistic characters, acting like they’re supposed to according to the dictates of ideology, rather than the messy complexity of human behavior, shows muddle-headedness.

And I don’t think that Moore, or V, are “very interested in demonstrating that its fascist men are unmanly in various ways.” Lewis Prothero collects dolls (as I do, for that matter), but he’s quite “out of the closet” about it, indeed will blather on about them to his security guards. (I think the only reason he had that habit was so that Moore and Lloyd could feature the scene where his precious little treasures were melted in the oven, to his horror.)

The bishop’s a pedophile. Loathsome, but is that “unmanly”? Why, unlike reality, where “pedos” are in danger of their lives in prison, so despised are they by the “normal” inmates — murderers and rapists that they may be — his security guards are approving: “That little chick with the pigtails. Ver-ee nice.” “Eza lad, enee, the Bishop? Dunno where he gets his energy from.”

Would you say that a “bottom” in a B&D/SM relationship is necessarily “unmanly”? Moore and V are more sophisticated than that; check out the scene in page 225 of the collected book where Conrad kisses his Missus’ foot, then smooches his way up onto her thighs. Why, the lad’s into it! And in that scene in the bathroom (page 199), when after drying off Helen Heyer, she leaves him sitting in the dark. He buries his face in the towel; weeping, or inhaling her effluvia?

Dascombe appears gay at first, then takes an interest in the widowed Rose. Did Moore change his mind about making him gay, or was the character seeking a “beard”? In any case, nothing “unmanly” about the situation.

The Leader is a piteous case; but is his love for the computer Fate (nicely echoed by V’s passion for Madam Justice) unmanly, or absurd? His later breakdown no more “unmanly” than someone going to piieces ’cause his wife left him.

Only a narrow-thinking, macho dumbass with limited parameters of what is “manly” would consider the behavior above not to qualify. Are Moore or V of that stripe? Hardly.

And, what about all the conventionally macho brutes working for the regime? The wife-beating Derek (whose end is hilariously appropos), many others, high and low…

“As a result, he ends up attacking fascist manliness in large part by accusing it of being unmanly”

V was sent to Larkhill, so is either from an ethnic minority or is not heterosexual (or both). Assuming V is male, straight or white runs contrary to the text. Note Prothero’s ‘it was us or them’ line and V’s ‘quite so’.

1) A comic book is first and foremost a work of art. Does a work of art have to be morally “right” or moral at all?

2) I understand that you’re placing Vendetta in the cult-classic context where it now lies, but bear in mind that it is an unlikely classic. The league where it was at the time of it’s publication was mostly Marvel superhero comics (that is, before Moore (and some of his contemporaries) with his fondness for twisting the genre as far as he can while still staying in it had turned the table of Marvel artistic quality upside down with Watchmen and such work.) They were originally commissioned to do a “weekly serialized pulp tale set in the 30’s.” I’m not saying that justifies anything, but if you want to thoroughly analyze V’s violence, misogyny and political correctness, you should probably even try to set it in that context.

4) I don’t personally think that either the work or V (character) are simply voicing out Moore’s personal opinions. I’ve always assumed V in the long list of conflicted, controversial antagonist-heroes of the Marvel world. I think he quite cleverly represents the total absurdity and chaos of anarchistic terrorism, not even meaning to claim that it is ultimately “right.” He’s not meant to be hero, in the similar vein that Joker is not meant to be a hero.
He doesn’t pop out of nowhere but it is very clearly told how he was born in the government testing laboratory. The way I see it, is that the moral of the story, if we want to find one, is somewhere in the idea that the Government/system itself produced such a creature, and so made sure their own downfall. That a system that is based on authority gained by fear & that mistreats people so can’t in the end be a permanent system, it in the end destroys itself. That complete control is not possible, eventually some nuthead is crazy enough to do whatever he likes, no matter how many laws there are against it. The theme is recurring throughout the work when V uses government mass communication and surveillance network to his own means, and eventually destroys the government by using the central computer of it’s own. = I don’t think anybody meant to project V’s actions as “good” or “right”, but as a inevitable extreme reaction to the extreme terror of the system.

The idea I’ve got from Moore as a person is that he’s the king trickster of all trolls, often using themes precisely because he sees they will provoke controversy from all sides. Most of his work seems to operate on the thin line between the current genre and parodying the genre, simultaneously using cliches and criticizing them. But yeah, I completely agree with the statement somewhere above, that he’s gotten smarter about this stuff as he’s gone along.

Of course. All I’m saying is that it’s impossible to fix the book’s attitude to gender when the *protagonist’s* gender isn’t fixed. It’s open. If V’s Ruth, that would adjust a few of the dials.

As for V’s morality – I think the original article is premised on the idea that V’s the hero. British comics readers are not primed to see the lead character of a comic as heroic in the way US readers are. From Dennis the Menace (the original) to Roger Mellie, the lead character is as likely to be destructive and unpleasant as a paragon of anything. Judge Dredd’s the obvious touchstone – a fascist, someone seeking to impose a police state on anarchy (Mega City One has never *actually* been a police state, it’s far too big and chaotic).

Jemima, the problem is that a subterranean uncertainty about V’s identity isn’t sufficient to undermine the great deal of textual energy expended on contempt for the fascists because of their unmanliness. It’s possible that Moore hoped it would, but I don’t think it succeeds. The genre defaults are just way too forceful for that.

I’m also unconvinced by your point about British anti-heroes. The thing about anti-heroes is that they’re heroes. The anti serves (again, IMO) much more to make violence-in-the-name-of-justice palatable than to question the trope of violence. If you want to raise questions about violence, you have to raise them explicitly — as Moore does in Watchmen, for example, where he repeatedly calls Rorschach’s sanity into question and generally presents violence as unsuccessful and cruel. There simply isn’t that kind of counter-narrative in V…not despite the fact that V is like Robin Hood, but because of it.

My general feeling, as a straight white man, is that V, like The Who, is a piece of art that is, despite formal touches, ultimately pretty limited by the need to feel sorry for straight white men. The Eastwood-like (albeit leftier) unrepentant masked sadist is ultimately our abusive primal father. Which is aesthetically fine, but the bad faith conceit of privilege erased by oppression is a fundamentally conservative move that curdles my cheese.

We don’t know V’s race…and all the villains (other than Helen Heyer) are straight white men in the story. As someone above notes, the folks rounded up and sent to the “Resettlement” camps are explicitly identified as “others” (homosexuals, Afro-Britons, etc.). It’s possible V is a straight white man…but the odds, it seems, are against it, given the description of those interned in the camps. What straight white man are we feeling sorry for the in the story exactly? Evey’s father? Moore? (I don’t see exactly how we’re feeling sorry for him, but I’m trying to figure out the comment). Also…isn’t Pete Townshend’s sexuality/orientation pretty ambiguous? Or is this not the “The Who” we’re talking about? Neither of these claims makes much sense to me. [We do know V is a man, though, despite what somebody above said…He’s referred to as “the man from Room V” by those who have seen him without his mask–and naked]

I agree, in general, about anti-heroes. I mean, most superheroes are vigilantes, but we’re clearly supposed to be on their side. Likewise with Robin Hood (and Dick Turpin—someone I used to pretend to be as I ran around in the woods in England–I was 6).

In V, though, I think the violence is shown to be morally problematic and ultimately not really successful (at the end of the book you end up with chaos, violence, etc… not any clearly better society)…so it’s not that different from Watchmen in that regard. In the end, I do think Watchmen is a better book…but not really on those grounds.

Bert’s comment, invoking Poe’s law and assuming it’s not satire, is an example of the “ideological criticism” I mentioned earlier, turned up way past sanity. Speaking as a straight white man, I will assert that we straight white men are absolutely as deserving of compassion and basic human dignity as anyone else, and the use of the term “privilege” to attempt to deny any group that is no different from any hate group demonising the group they hate based on a prejudice that they have it better than anyone else. That Bert is himself a straight white man does not mean he’s not talking hate.

Patrick, I’m curious on what basis you think that your comment, and by implication, your reading of V, is not ideological?

Prejudice has a history. Straight white men have not in general had their human dignity stepped on for being straight, or for being white, or for being men (though they have not infrequently for being poor — or, in the case of many people now considered white, for not being white). Insisting that privilege doesn’t exist and that talking about it is some sort of hate crime strikes me as fairly silly, to put it kindly. Among other things, it is not a “prejudice” to say that white men have historically had it better than other folks. That’s just history. It certainly doesn’t mean that all white men are better off than anyone else, or even that all white men are or have always been white. But rushing to equate the experience of folks who haven’t actually suffered systematic discrimination with the history of those who have is pretty much the kind of historical erasure that Bert is talking about (though I’m not exactly sure why he sees it in V in particular…perhaps he’ll explain further….)

Eric, it’s really not clear to me that we’re supposed to see the end as anything but an improvement. Certainly, V is presented fairly unambiguously as a self-sacrificing hero, it seems to me. His most problematic violent act — the torture of Evey — is forgiven by the victim in no uncertain terms, and even presented by her as a kind of growth experience. Other characters with moral standing (the doctor who regrets her past actions) also see him as just, and even as unearthly in his (physical and I think moral) beauty. I just don’t see anywhere in the text where he is undermined or really questioned. Does anyone have any textual example of any time where anything V does is presented as wrong, unjustified, and immoral? I mean specifically in the story itself, rather than from a general “murder is bad” perspective? It’s been a bit since I read it so perhaps I’ve missed it, but I just don’t remember there being any such moment.

Eric, fair enough. But John Wayne was only the first of anti-fascist fascist white men in film. True, he could be Franz Fanon– “Black Skin, White Masks.” But it fits into a familiar narrative, and Moore himself seems to be providing us a fairly straightforward action hero wish-fulfillment that, one would assume, mirrors its authors, as so many have in the past.

Patrick, I can only assure you that the satirical misapprehension is mutual.

Familiar with Fanon…but not really with John Wayne (don’t think I’ve ever seen a John Wayne movie). Hard to see V as John Wayne or as Charles Bronson (or Dirty Harry)…for a number of reasons set up in the story. I mean…Batman in Dark Knight Returns…He’s a fascist (though maybe not anti-fascist?), but reading V as racialized white doesn’t seem to work to me.

Several folks above pointed out that Finch repeatedly calls V’s morality into question…and Finch is definitely one of three P.O.V. characters we at various times see as “good.” V, Evey, and Finch are all versions of one another to some degree. Evey forgives V, but Finch certainly doesn’t. Of course, V knows he will respond this way and tricks Finch into killing him…but Finch’s response is definitely a valid one in the terms of the book. He’s one of three characters who undergoes an “existential awakening”–He does so so that he can “understand V”–the trauma he underwent and “think like him” in order to solve the crime. Despite this “empathy”–he follows through on his vow to kill V if given the chance. This is another V/Susan parallel that gets set up as well. Rose Almond killing Susan just as (simultaneously? can’t recall) Finch kills Susan. Two sides of the same coin, they both “deserve” death… [People tend to forget Finch–but he’s definitely a “good guy” in temperament despite working for the fascists…and he provides the most sustained critique of V as “monster.”]

Of course, this supports/promotes violence as a “solution” too…to some degree…but we’ve got Evey and potentially Dominic as next generation figures to move away from that.

I’m fine with the notion that the book presents violence, problematically, as something of a “necessity” before a calmer, gentler, England can prevail. If folks are against violence of any kind, the book is certainly not going to be their cup of tea… But the book doesn’t unproblematically support violence either…It’s quite ambivalent about it.

Also, I think calling Bert a hate criminal based on his distaste for self-justifying narratives of white male oppression is off base. Such narratives certainly exist and are distasteful given the power white males have had in the West (and yes, I’m one too). I just don’t think V is such a narrative.

Finally, I hope. The ending is shown to be more or less where we were at the beginning of the story (in the wake of the nuclear exchange)…Chaos…”tribes” of people foraging for food, looting, threatening rape…

The fascist regime filled the power void and provided order, stability, etc. It’s shown to be an oppressive terrible regime…but at the same time, the few glimpses of what we get before AND after are hardly encouraging. Evey’s in a “better place” (I’ve admitted this is distasteful, given how she got there)…but it’s very unclear that England is as well. In order to appreciate her “freedom,” Evey had to undergo existential trauma and psychological torture. England’s residents would each have to undergo similar experiences, it seems, in order to treat their “freedom” similarly…They haven’t and it seems more likely that chaos, violence, brutality, etc. are the order of the day. Is “V” then “right” to “free” these people? I don’t think it’s quite so clear. I’m not arguing that the book configures V as a complete villain…but his position is ambivalent.

Making a judgement on an individual you know nothing about based on your opinion of a category of people you perceive them to belong to, or making a judgment on a whole category of people based on your opinion of certain people you perceive as belonging to that category, is the very definition of prejudice. Justifying your prejudice on the grounds that you perceive that category of people have it better than everyone else is what all hate groups do. Anti-semites think Jews run the world, homophobes think there’s a gay mafia in the media pushing a gay agenda down their throats, racists think immigrants get preferential access to jobs and government services over locals. Declaring you can never feel sorry for a straight white man because you think straight white men are privileged is really no different.

This is not to say that all groups, or all individuals, get treated equally, either historically or now. But I can’t see how you can beat prejudice with more prejudice. The only way to equality is to treat everyone as individuals, not as representatives of categories.

As far as the ending is concerned, I agree with Eric. I’ve read that Moore originally wanted to have V institute an anarchist utopia, but changed his mind. He’s overthrown the fascists, but what happens next is anyone’s guess, and what little we see of post-fascist England isn’t exactly encouraging.

The utopia Moore did institute in Miracleman looks pretty nightmarish to me, and I always assumed that was the intent, but then I always assumed V’s torture and brainwashing of Evey was meant to expose the hidden totalitarianism behind V’s anarchism, and Moore’s quoted approval of his actions has kind of shaken that. Maybe that’s the kind of Utopia he wanted in V as well, I don’t know. But for whatever reason, he opted for a more open ending in V. Maybe people would create a voluntary order without rulers, or maybe violence and division would prevail again.

Patrick: But who said they couldn’t feel sorry for a straight white man? Nobody said that.

“The only way to equality is to treat everyone as individuals, not as representatives of categories.”

I just don’t buy that, at least not as an absolute. You don’t get to equality by pretending that inequality doesn’t exist. History exists; prejudice exists. Refusing to see them on ideological grounds simply is not going to get you to nirvana. On the contrary, refusing to admit their existence is often a way to perpetuate them. Which is why in the US many people today seem to think that the only racism that’s ever existed is prejudice against white men.

It’s hard to tell what was the intention exactly in Miracleman since it’s shortened…but I’d agree it’s ambivalent at best about rule by supermen….

Eric, in terms of Finch — the problem is that Finch as critique is entirely absorbed/manipulated/appropriated by V himself. That is, Finch sees V as a monster…but V himself uses and controls Finch essentially to make that critique, and then to kill himself. It’s not an argument (like in Pygmalion, for example); it’s a dialectic which is synthesized by V himself. Because V is essentially controlling and/or putting his stamp of approval on Finch, Finch’s criticism ends up not undermining, but validating V himself. V is *so* smart and *so* noble that he engineers his own death when he is no longer necessary. It’s just really difficult to see how any of that calls V’s motive or wisdom into question.

In Watchmen, Moore goes out of his way to show that not only is Ozymandias a moral monster, but he *also* is *not* as smart as he thinks he is. Adrian doesn’t know everything; he didn’t figure out all the variables; he is not in control. If he *were* then that would be a validation of his plan — if you are smarter than everybody else, and can control the world, that’s an enormous weight on your side. Moore denies Veidt that weight; he *does not* deny it to V. V is, in fact, smarter than everyone in the book; his plans all work out exactly as he intends. The criticisms of him are ones he has anticipated and even fostered; as a result, they make him more completely unquestionable, not less. It’s true that the world doesn’t look so great at the end of V — but it’s the future V chose, and everything in the book is designed to show us that he is infallible. I don’t see anywhere within the book to criticize that infallibility.

No, it’s just treated like it walks like a thought crime, smells like a thought crime, barks like a thought crime…

———————
But V is very interested in demonstrating that its fascist men are unmanly in various ways…and I think relatedly misogynist.

…the problem is that a subterranean uncertainty about V’s identity isn’t sufficient to undermine the great deal of textual energy expended on contempt for the fascists because of their unmanliness.
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Do I have to go through the book and write up a comprehensive listing of the countless ways in which most of the the book’s fascists are “manly,” in the most stereotypically noxious way possible? Starting with the very beginning, in which a bunch of unfortunately-named “fingermen” (are they “body cavity search” specialists?) say they’ll make Evey do whatever they want, and then kill her?

And, you say they’re not being portrayed as deserving of V’s attacks because they’re evil, or evil and hypocrites like the Bishop, but because they’re “unmanly”?

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…[Moore] ends up attacking fascist manliness in large part by accusing it of being unmanly…and then figuring that unmanliness as itself corrupt and evil.

… the book is extremely eager to link fascism to sexual deviance and to convict the male fascists of failing to be men.
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Of course, Moore is such an ultramasculinist macho man, how could he not have contempt for the “unmanly”?

Never mind that any non-fascist “sexual deviants” have already been murdered by the system; that when Finch has his transcending LSD trip in the Larkhill concentration camp, he has moving visions of the dead gay men, “so gentle, so softly spoken” who had been killed there.

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I think Moore personally is very much committed to queer rights.
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Yes, to put it mildly:

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AARGH (Artists Against Rampant Government Homophobia) was a 76-page one-off comics anthology published by [Alan Moore’s publishing company] Mad Love in 1988.

The comic was designed to aid the fight against Clause 28, which was a controversial amendment to the Local Government Act 1988, a British law which was designed to outlaw the promotion of homosexuality by local authorities….

But that’s no protection against Moore being repeatedly accused of heaping “contempt” upon the “unmanly.”

Be warned, artists and writers! That’s what happens when you don’t have your art screened and approved by the P.C. Authority. At best, if your work doesn’t fit the properly narrow ideological parameters, you can be excused due to…incompetence.

Because if a creator means well and their work is not utterly Politically Correct, then obviously they just didn’t know what they were doing!

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Noah Berlatsky says:

Does anyone have any textual example of any time where anything V does is presented as wrong, unjustified, and immoral? I mean specifically in the story itself, rather than from a general “murder is bad” perspective?
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“Presented”? Does that mean a narrator has to come barging in, and say “What V is doing is wrong, unjustified, and immoral…Kids, don’t try this at home! This is BAD!!” Are readers expected to be unable to figure complexity out, without some overt preaching?

I’d neglected getting back to my listing of V’s, um, harsh actions posted earlier, because, silly me, I’d thought the examples indicated that the case had pretty clearly been made in the story itself that many of his actions were horrendous. In the “show, don’t tell” fashion. (Though the decent Finch repeatedly expresses moral condemnation.) But, that was a couple ‘a days ago; guess it’s all forgotten by now.

I’d earlier mentioned, “Note how the movie…had V expressing his agonized regret to Evey for the sexual humiliation [and torture] he subjected her to. Whilst in the comic, he apologized not one whit. For anything he did. ”

A few highlights from my post of September 18:

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Dunno how many here have the “pamphlet” issues to look at. I’ll give page numbers from the trade paperback, but mention “chapters” to indicate which individual issue the examples noted are to be found in.

Chapter 3 – Victims

In page 24, Finch, the decent detective who has repeatedly told the Leader he doesn’t believe in the fascist system, but does his work to help England, describes V’s killing of several security agents: “Whatever their faults, those were two human beings…and he slaughtered them like cattle!”

Chapter 9 – Violence

Page 64: Evey is appalled V killed the bishop: “It’s wrong, V…You involved me…killing’s wrong…isn’t it?” He cooly replies, “…As for me involving you, I seem to remember that you were the one anxious to make a deal.” Evey chokes, “I didn’t know you were going to…Oh, Christ, V…” before running from the room. Unruffled, V goes back to his book.

Page 72: Finch (who is sympathetically depicted as a good man trying to do the best he can — V, in his “Vicious Cabaret” lyrics in page 90, describes him as “a policeman with an honest soul” — even if his employer…leaves something to be desired) discovers that over a period of years, V has been killing everyone involved in running the Larkhill “Resettlement” Camp: “Oh God. All those people. That’s monstrous. That’s pure bloody evil.”

Page 75: Delia Surridge, a doctor who’d worked at Larkhill and grown to feel horrible guilt over what she’d done, try to make amends (“I’ve seen her treating little kids…” Finch recalls), awakes to find V by her bed. “…you are going to kill me.” V holds up a hypodermic: “I killed you ten minutes ago. While you were asleep.” (Brrr! That’s one of the most chilling lines I’ve ever read…)

The most brutal of V’s actions are yet to come…”To Be Continued!”
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Re the latter: alas, poor Rose! She is no cardboard victim, but gets a great deal of attention, most sympathetic. But not only does V kill her abusive husband and leave this damaged woman floundering, but then he kills her husband’s replacement.

And most coldly and cunningly, via his control of the Fate computer V apparently makes sure she gets no government payments as a widow of an official. “They won’t give me state support, Derek,” she thinks, looking at his picture. (Remember, V’s caused food shortages and subsequent riots via that method; controls the Post Office to mail his anti-government ditties; has told Evey that for the Leader, he’s “cultivated a most special rose.”)

Countless bills are needing to be paid, and she can’t get a job; has had no previous work experience. Which leads to her prostituting herself just to put off going onstage, then her degradation dancing at the Kit Kat Club, thinking as she does so, “Now…I crouch like an animal and offer my hindquarters in submission to the world…I can’t sleep for being scared; for crying; hating; thinking ‘Who has done this to me?”

Evey suffered to be “freed.” But Rose — utterly innocent, except of marrying a guy who turned out to be a bastard — ends up traumatized over a more prolonged period.

The Leader, reduced to a pathetic state, ends up blamed for her troubles and gunned down by Rose. The last we see of her is an arm sticking up from a pile-up of enraged security forces, who at the very least will beat her to a bloody pulp.

Answering the predictable accusations: is this “misogynist”? Does Moore show her as deserving her fate, does he sneer at her fear, pain, humiliation? Mock her pitiful memories of happier times, dreams of a cozy home and children?

And if Moore is holding up V as an utterly noble hero, why does he have him — in masterfully-wrought plot and scenes — carry out such appalling actions? When he could far more easily have just gotten a rifle and killed the Leader himself?

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Noah Berlatsky says:

Patrick: “The only way to equality is to treat everyone as individuals, not as representatives of categories.”

I just don’t buy that, at least not as an absolute. You don’t get to equality by pretending that inequality doesn’t exist. History exists; prejudice exists. Refusing to see them on ideological grounds simply is not going to get you to nirvana. On the contrary, refusing to admit their existence is often a way to perpetuate them. Which is why in the US many people today seem to think that the only racism that’s ever existed is prejudice against white men.
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Does advocating “treat[ing] everyone as individuals, not as representatives of categories” (which gets put down as thinking based on “ideological grounds,” unlike anything else here) translate into “pretending that inequality doesn’t exist”? And, therefore, “treat[ing] everyone as individuals, not as representatives of categories” supposedly leads to “in the US many people today seem to think that the only racism that’s ever existed is prejudice against white men”?

See, if you don’t follow the ideologically-correct thinking (whether it’s Moore showing that women can be nasty, power-hungry manipulators or Patrick daring to say “straight white men are absolutely as deserving of compassion and basic human dignity as anyone else”), then you’re seen as gleefully embracing misogyny, or “pretending that inequality doesn’t exist,” and giving a boost to racism.

————————
Eric, in terms of Finch — the problem is that Finch as critique is entirely absorbed/manipulated/appropriated by V himself. That is, Finch sees V as a monster…but V himself uses and controls Finch essentially to make that critique…
———————–

Your argument is to condemn the book (in yet another fashion) for showing V as “infallible.” So Finch’s appalled reaction to V’s cold-blooded killings (not for simple murder per se, but how “…he slaughtered them like cattle!” and the lengthy plan to one-by-one eliminate everyone who’d run Larkhill) is Finch being “use[d] and control[led]… essentially to make that critique”?

Might as well argue that when Dominic (Finch’s assistant) realized the Room 5 = Room V connection, Roman numerals being used in concentration camps, thus exposing V’s lengthy vendetta; when Almond confronted V with a revolver that he’d forgotten to reload after using it to terrorize Rose, that was all part of V’s master plan, and thus further serves to condemn the book for portraying V as omnipotent.

And, sorry, but Ozymandias is not a moral monster. But then, this is the zone of righteously superior moral condemnation. Consider if you could go back in time, toss a powerful bomb at a Hitler rally, and kill him, along with a bunch of innocent bystanders. Does it make you a “moral monster” to knowingly cause a few deaths, when millions of lives will thus be saved?

What Moore showed in “Watchmen” was a more nuanced (the horror!) critique: that Ozymandias had, in effect, “sold his soul to the devil.” (His pet, Bubastis, bears the name of a demon, is red with hornlike growths; is a cat, traditional shape for a “familiar.”) That, like the hapless guy in the pirate comic, who in order to save the town and his wife from the Black Freighter, ended up killing innocents with the best intentions (mistaking them for pirates), and finally joining the damned, hellish crew.

V himself, as enumerated in my September 18 post, repeatedly is depicted as a devil figure, with Faust’s V-laden motto in his HQ, Evey making a “deal” with him, then horrified when murder was part of the bargain.

“V himself, as enumerated in my September 18 post, repeatedly is depicted as a devil figure, with Faust’s V-laden motto in his HQ, Evey making a “deal” with him, then horrified when murder was part of the bargain.”

The devil is hardly a negative figure, and hasn’t been since Milton, at the very least.

V’s death and rebirth in the camp and heroic self sacrifice seems a bit jesus-y. (especially if you want to view Jesus in a more Joseph Campbell sort of way- Moore isn’t a christian so there’s no reason he wouldn’t)

If we’re going to get more pretentious Evey has to be tortured to experience the suffering the Christ figure experienced and therefore access a bit of the divine. (Though it really isn’t clear she’s necessarily all that enlightened at the end- she didn’t access V’s super mind bending drug or whatever)

V’s called the villain but its clear that’s not really how Moore sees him.

And V’s video broadcast where he says this is humanity’s last chance positions him as a sort of Jesus figure or intermediary between humanity and God. You can think of it just as a funny skit V wrote, but I tend to think of it as the heart of the story.

Its not clear at all that V has accomplished anything in the end though- V makes it clear that humanity has fucked things up repeatedly throughout human history and they’re going to just get one more chance, but it isn’t clear at all that humanity won’t just fuck it up again. From what I recall the bleak ending is just a guy walking away into a misty background- hardly a hopeful image.

Jesus rising from the grave with a Tec-9 to slaughter the horde is a Rambo fantasy, not a straightforwardly Messianic one, no matter how many Christians now (and Jews at the time) would have preferred that kind of resurrection.

People do love an iconoclastic charismatic manipulator who directs them toward an earthly transcendence, but yeah, Satan woud be the proper analogy there.

But it’s all ironic… “Free yourselves,” V says, “Or I’ll do it for you!”— What’s free about that? To be forced to free oneself? It couldn’t be more obviously ironic, could it?

I always read the Evey torture thing as pocket existentialism, not Christian/religious. Evey has to hit “rock bottom”–realize her own “nothingness” before she can embrace her radical freedom. It’s straight out of the Sartre playbook…though I guess I can see the religious reading too.

It’s ironic…but the irony redounds against the folks who won’t free themselves, I think, not against V. The point is that people suck; V tries to help them, but they’re too idiotic to be helped. I mean, it’s not like we’re supposed to think that V doesn’t get the irony, right? He’s joking; he’s self-aware. He knows mankind doesn’t really deserve his help, but he helps them anyway,as much as he can, which isn’t all that much.

it makes British Eighties Leftie Error #1 which is to see Thatcher as somehow exactly equivalent to the BNP

Actually, no. It was originally written after all before Thatcher’s re-election, before the Falklands and imagined that Labour would’ve won the election and then withdrew from NATO, something that seems ridiculous now but was actually on the cards at the time. Norsefire explicitely isn’t the Tories in disguise, but an almagam of the National Front and BNP and all those other actually existing white supremacist groups then still active.

Ironically, Moore later complained of his own lack of imagination in thinking it needed a nuclear war for Britain to become an authoritarian state, when it didn’t need to in the eighties as they actually happened. Thatcher and co might not have been as out and out racist and fascist like the BNP or NF were, but they still waged war on the wokring class in general and the miners in particular, were not keen on homosexuals (clause 28), gleefully beat up hippies travelling to Stonehenge and so on.

V’s death and rebirth in the camp and heroic self sacrifice seems a bit jesus-y. (especially if you want to view Jesus in a more Joseph Campbell sort of way- Moore isn’t a christian so there’s no reason he wouldn’t)
———————-

Well, let’s see what Moore… (we’re all neglecting David Lloyd’s exceptionally important contributions; but in the damning article and accompanying commentary, what’s being focused on is plot and dialogue, pretty much Moore’s work.)

…has V saying, as he “sets the stage” for his demise, carrying with Eve (as the more grown-up Evey would be called) gelignite down to his funeral train:

“Anarchy wears two faces, both creator and destroyer. Thus, destroyers topple empires; make a canvas of clean rubble where creators can then build a better world.

“Rubble, once achieved, makes further ruins’ means irrelevant. Away with our explosives, then! Away with our destroyers! They have no place within our better world.

“But let us raise a toast to all our bombers, all our bastards, most unlovely and most unforgivable.

“Let’s drink their health…then meet with them no more.”

Now Jesus died, we are told, for our sins; by His death — if we “accept” him, sayeth the fine print — we are “saved” from damnation. Thus, the Lamb of God takes on the part of the old Hebrew custom of the “scapegoat”; a hapless creature into whom ancient Jewish villages would dump all their sins, then cast out to die in the desert. (As gorgeously illustrated by this Pre-Raphaelite, painted in the actual Holy Land: http://www.friendsofart.net/static/images/art2/william-holman-hunt-the-scapegoat-.jpg )

V, on the other hand, sees himself as a bomber, a bastard, “most unlovely and most unforgivable.” Removing himself from the scene once his task is done.

(He must have some degree of precognition, though this is understandably not made much of, for the sake of maintaining suspense. Is V’s power, this ability to see the pattern, the future, how the pieces fall together, a precursor of what will more fully blossom in Dr. Manhattan? Along with the increasing alienation from humanity? Recall the scene in “Watchmen” where the Comedian, clutching his bleeding face –slashed by the Vietnamese woman he’d then shot — tells Manhattan how he could changed the bullet to mercury, teleported her out of harm’s way, but he didn’t. “You’re becoming a flake,” losing touch with humanity, “God help us all.” (Quoting from memory.)

Speaking of Christianity: Eve, doesn’t that ring a bell? Who was lured by a snake into eating the fruit of wisdom? In “V for Vendetta,” Evey says she’d be content to stay in the cozy Shadow Gallery forever. In order to grow, must she not be cast out of that subterranean Eden?

And in that truly shocking scene where she removes her blindfold and finds herself suddenly out in the open, and begs the V-figure, “Let’s go back inside,” V concludes his response with, “Your father is dead.” ‘Long as we’re thinking Biblical, does not this echo “God is dead”?

——————-
…(Though it really isn’t clear she’s necessarily all that enlightened at the end [of her torture] – she didn’t access V’s super mind bending drug or whatever)
——————-

She’s enlightened enough. (More on her ordeal later.) Even if he could have obtained that drug, tough, V wouldn’t have given it to her; he didn’t want a duplicate of himself, but someone who’d take over for the next stage.

——————–
V’s called the villain but its clear that’s not really how Moore sees him.
——————–

No, but hardly a conventional hero, either. As our British friends (tips hat) are long familiar with “heroes” with plenty of atrocious attributes, I can’t help but think of a Hindu deity — my own i??a-devat? ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I%E1%B9%A3%E1%B9%ADa-devat%C4%81 ) — who can be seen as…ambiguous.

Kali is not only fearsome in appearance — belt of severed arms, necklace of skulls, hangs out in the cremation ground (Swoon! I’m such a Goth at heart) — but practices exceedingly “tough love” upon her devotees: wielding her sicklelike sword of wisdom (it has a eye on it, the better to see you with), she’ll chop the heads off her worshipers. Symbolically slaying the false self of the ego, that their true selves may emerge. Her most famous devotee, Ramakrishna, had a vision where Kali emerged from the ocean, gave birth to a child, tenderly nursed it…then tore it to pieces and devoured it! (Reminiscent of Mother Nature in action.) Many Hindus see her as a dubious, even demonic figure; yet millions see beyond her harsh approach, and are loving, fervent devotees…

———————-
And V’s video broadcast where he says this is humanity’s last chance positions him as a sort of Jesus figure or intermediary between humanity and God. You can think of it just as a funny skit V wrote, but I tend to think of it as the heart of the story.
———————–

Indeed it’s most important. Though in the broadcast he speaks as if he were God, his intent is the same as what he told Eve at the end of her ordeal: “I didn’t put you in a prison…I just showed you the bars.” (Emphasis added.) And, that video broadcast does the same to the British populace. (Not that their immediate reaction is exactly inspiring.)

A similar revelation, BTW, to what Finch has in his LSD trip, imagining himself in V’s cell:

——————-
Its not clear at all that V has accomplished anything in the end though- V makes it clear that humanity has fucked things up repeatedly throughout human history and they’re going to just get one more chance, but it isn’t clear at all that humanity won’t just fuck it up again. From what I recall the bleak ending is just a guy walking away into a misty background- hardly a hopeful image.
———————-

No.

But, here’s an important detail in the individual serialized comics that was left out of the collection, which I’d forgotten about until recently. As a setup, in page 245 the dying V tells Eve: “By turn of century they’ll know their fate; either a rose midst rubble blooms, or else has bloomed too late.”

I don’t know if this bit was intended by the original creators, or added by the designers at DC to serve a similar function as the “doomsday clock” on the back covers of the serialized “Watchmen” did, blood pouring over it ever more copiously. Each “V for Vendetta” issue featured inside the back cover (can’t recall the series of images that well, except for the final one; it’s the trade paperback I keep handy) a high-contrast, B&W photo of a field of rubble.

Isaac Butler does not seem to get it. He mixes with abandon his points about the book and his points about the film, neglecting entirely the fact that the book had no widespread social importance. You can dissect the content of the book as much as you want – but you cannot take the results and extrapolate them to make social comments about a wider society than the very narrow customer-base who consumed such illustrated books.

The comic-book arose from the common obsession left-wing writers had for resetting pieces of historical literature into some alternative (and always dark) “Thatcherite Britain”. It was an interesting genre for the first half-score or so creations, but soon there were hundreds of them, in theatres, on TV, on the radio, in books, and no audiences took then seriously.

But the film was made and released in the era of Blairite Britain – a far more sinister, more malevolent and, importantly, more REAL regime. For a cinema audience in Britain viewing “V for Vendetta” it was ALL about Tony Blair and New Labour. For us in Britain, the culmination, with the delicious delight of seeing the Houses of Parliament blown up, was the knowledge that everyone watching that image was saying to themselves “YES, YES!” at the glorious, wish-fulfilling sight of it.

The film just happened to be released at the right time and at the right place – that is why its imagery became important, became appropriated for other uses. To analyse the content of the book and take that analysis and then try to make criticism of anonymous (i.e. all of us) and the Occupy movement is just laughable. It is laughable because there is no connection.

“I don’t think its clear that the “ends justify the means” as I said above…”

Again, though, neither does Moore. V comes to understand that he can tear down the current regime, but someone else will need to build its replacement. He nominates Evey … but then brainwashes her and she chooses to become a V clone. The idea this is meant to be unproblematic and that when DC do W for Walletgrab in a couple of years, Evey will be queen of utopia is not even slightly what the book suggests will happen.

“V comes to understand that he can tear down the current regime, but someone else will need to build its replacement.”

I don’t really see him coming to understand anything. He knows all to begin with, pretty much. If the jokes on him, he always knows the joke ahead of time…which gives him a very privileged relation to the author, and makes it difficult to perceive a counter narrative.

Or to put it another way…V knows all the counter narratives. Therefore, it’s very hard to see how they undermine him.

“V knows all the counter narratives. Therefore, it’s very hard to see how they undermine him.”

You’re taking an unreadable character and projecting onto it. V’s not omnipotent or Alan Moore in disguise. Like I say: British comics. You’re not meant to agree with or like the main characters. If you’re reading Judge Dredd as ‘he’s violent but ultimately on the side of the angels’, then you’re misreading Judge Dredd. ‘Anti hero’ doesn’t mean ‘a hero, but more violent’, it means what it says: they are creatures of darkness and insanity. As for V, watch/read some of the stuff Moore gives as the sources. Watch Theatre of Blood in particular, or Phibes. Are Vincent Price’s characters in those ‘aware of the counter narratives’?

You’re committed to a version of the story where V is the hero, self aware and ultimately right. Alan Moore isn’t.

It’s pretty different from Judge Dredd, as far as I can tell. The Judge Dredd I’ve seen often flirts to some extent with parody. V’s not like that at all.

And, as Isaac shows, there’s a lot of in-text work done to link V to Moore and to present him as controlling/powerful. The bit in the camp, where he arranges all of those items in a seemingly meaningless, but complex and fascinating pattern — and then it turns out to be all part of a master plan. That’s pretty clearly a comment on V’s superior intelligence…and also an analogy for the way Alan Moore puts together his comics. And it’s also an analogy for V’s torture/conversion of Evey…and of his manipulation of Dominic.

And then there’s that moment too when he tells Evey “I’m not your father.” He’s basically reading her mind; he can follow her thoughts because he’s smarter and more sophisticated than she is. He’s not *her* daddy because he’s the uberdaddy; not the diegetic father, but the extra-narrative master.

As another example: the moment when V takes off his mask and the woman doctor sees his face, she’s obviously awestruck. He’s presented there as semi-divine. And of course there’s all his cultural knowledge and sophistication.

There’s lots of textual evidence that V is something special and amazing; that he has vastly superior intelligence from anyone else in the book; that he understands how the other characters work; that he has in fact directed and arranged basically everything that happens. What textual evidence do you have to put on the other side? Is there any evidence that V ever fucks up, or that he learns anything or is tricked or suprised? Does anyone present an argument against him for which he has no answer or which he has not anticipated? Is there anything? Because I haven’t seen anyone offer a single thing — and given that, I don’t think the metatextual appeal to British comic tropes is nearly as strong as people seem to be claiming it is.

“I don’t think the metatextual appeal to British comic tropes is nearly as strong as people seem to be claiming it is.”

You’re eliding two different things, there: the British tradition of celebrating criminals/villains and V being super-competent. And you’ve shifted the goalposts from a question of the rightness of V’s actions to whether he carries those actions out efficiently.

Time and time again, the question is raised whether V is serving large, noble aims or simply taking revenge. Evey’s acceptance of V at the end is presented as problematic. She comes round to his way of thinking after she’s tortured. This is pretty difficult to read as V being nice.

“Evey’s acceptance of V at the end is presented as problematic. She comes round to his way of thinking after she’s tortured. This is pretty difficult to read as V being nice.”

I’d really like to see someone actually look at the six or so pages between the reveal that V is behind Evey’s torture and her thanking him for it and make the case that the text is doing something other than celebrating (venerating?) what V did. Because I just don’t see it. People keep asserting that the section is meant to be troubling simply because they’re troubled by it. But that’s not good enough. Evey is blessed with a good will hunting style emotional catharsis and is then born again in the rain, triumphant. From then on out she shows no sign of psychological damage whatsoever.

I’d also like to know how people explain away the last few pages that Evey spends with V before sending him off to his fiery appointment with destiny. Her funeral oration is entirely laudatory, and it is paired with images that are drenched in positive sentiment. One of the arguments that’s been consistently raised here is that Moore kinda changed his mind about V halfway through the project and when he picked it up again, armed with his newly developed Watchmen-era mastery of comics scripting, inserted more conflict in it. But look at this section. Here you have a triumphant speech about V paired with triumphant, funereal images. There’s no irony here. No distance. No tension between word and image.

Again, I’m a reasonable type guy. I don’t care about winning this argument in particular. I just remain unconvinced. My beef with the idea that there’s a firm counter-narrative in this text is that any time there’s a gesture towards that kind of internal, subtextual content, the book always goes out of its way to resolve that conflict back in V’s favor. (I should probably have made that point in the article itself, but hey, we are fallible creatures.)

I can’t find a single instance when this doesn’t happen. Noah’s brought up the idea that someone could actually argue against what V is doing convincingly. That’s one way. Moore could’ve also included a flashback panel of V shaving Evey’s head in the midst of her funeral oration. There’s another. i could think of a bunch of different ways the text could do that if that’s what it was doing. But I can’t find any real concrete examples of it actually leaving a textual conflict about V unresolved OR leaving it resolved against V.

I can totally buy that Moore tried to do this within the confines of the book he had already halfway written. I just think he failed to do it.

“He’s not *her* daddy because he’s the uberdaddy; not the diegetic father, but the extra-narrative master.”

So Evey stands for the reader, and we can take it that what she accepts is what we’re meant to accept … except when it contradicts your argument, when we have to take it to mean the opposite?

Follow the logic of your own argument. If V isn’t Evey’s father figure, V’s not our metaphorical dad, either. V’s philosophical agenda is precisely to rid them of uberdaddies. He’s telling the reader he’s not their dad.

Yeah, he is forcing change on people, using violence. It’s exactly the same as every real life ‘revolutionary movement’, which sees their own way as the only way, as people’s failure to agree as simply a lack of education or catalysing disruption to their routine. Again, in real life, these people are seen as fanatics, on the whole, not the good guys.

It’s a fatal contradiction in V’s plan. He’s leading. Even when he refuses to spoonfeed answers (say, p218 of the graphic novel), he’s set the path for Evey, he’s shaped the ‘wisdom’ she’s meant to draw on. He realises this. p222 of the graphic novel – ‘away with our destroyers’ – *he* sees himself as a destroyer. And when Evey vows ‘the age of killers is over’, but the next thing she does is blow up Downing Street, that’s not just Alan Moore carelessly not noticing.

The question is not V’s spiritual journey. We’ve no idea what’s going on behind that mask. His behaviour suggests that he’s a high functioning psychopath, not Superman in a wig and a hat.

The book confronts us with troubling imagery and then immediately subverts it. If you look at the text itself, the revelation that V is behind it leads to redemption, triumph and healing. The ends are positive and the means are never mentioned again. It’s capped with Evey thanking V. After which she goes on to be awesome and self-actualized, to put it in a popular term from the time.

This is just some of the evidence that I would present to make the case that the book ultimately celebrates and venerates V’s torture of Evey. I’ve asked you to present something in the text beyond your own feelings on the matter that it doesn’t. It doesn’t have to be a moment where it’s spelled out. It could be something subtextual. Something in the art. Something in the tension between word and image, or panel and sequence. You’ve decided to respond by instead implying that I’m stupid. Which is really too bad as I was looking forward to actually having a case made that I could respond to.

I think it’s correct that V is saying he’s not anyone’s father, and that that’s supposed to mean that we all are radically free. But it is *V* who sets us radically free (through the story, not through torture, thank goodness), and V who is teaching us all these lessons. He is, as you say, unknowable…but he’s also all knowing (again, is there any moment where anything in the text surprises him?) Unknowable and all-knowing is a good thumbnail description of God, it seems to me.

Again, to convince me, there needs to be some evidence in the text that V is not a privileged character; that he isn’t all-knowing, or that his actions are effectively criticized in the text. Saying that you see problems with his actions doesn’t mean that the text presents them as problems. I feel like, using your argumentative strategy, I could insist that Goldfinger is a critique of British Cold war machinations because it shows James Bond raping Pussy Galore.

No, I haven’t. I’m sorry if it came across that way. I actually responded with quotes and page numbers.

p222, Book 3, Chapter 5 – V says ‘away with our destroyers’ … as he shows Evey the Tube train packed with explosives. He anoints Evey his successor, and pretty much the first thing she does in the role (p260) is repeat V’s sentiment … and then initiates a terrorist bombing of Downing Street, while what the captions tell us she’s thinking is that she’s going to build, not destroy.

Now, there are two ways to take that: Alan Moore is such a doofus he’s not noticed that’s what he wrote her doing, or Alan Moore is suggesting that this isn’t the cathartic moment of solution *for us* that it clearly is *for Evey*. That we’re not meant to take it at face value.

As for ‘the ends are positive’ … WE DON’T SEE THE END. We’ve no idea if they are positive. V has clearly conditioned/brainwashed/raised the consciousness/stockholm syndromed Evey, he’s equally clearly not managed to do that with the general population. So, no, we don’t get to say that V was ‘right’ or his actions were positive. At the end, Britain collapses into chaos. Last time it did that in the story, the fascists used that to take over. It’s not even a case of V imposing himself on the population. He knocks the government over, that’s all – and, from the title onwards, there’s been a constant undercurrent that V’s doing it for entirely personal reasons rather than as some neutral paragon of virtue.

“I think it’s correct that V is saying he’s not anyone’s father, and that that’s supposed to mean that we all are radically free.”

Sorry, your use of the phrase ‘He’s not *her* daddy because he’s the uberdaddy; not the diegetic father, but the extra-narrative master.’ confused me. You’re eliding ‘what V says’ with ‘what Moore wants us to think’, except when it suits you not to.

My point is exactly that’s the question the book asks: ‘are we meant to take this on authority?’. The answer, over and over, is that asking that question is the important thing.

“But it is *V* who sets us radically free (through the story, not through torture, thank goodness), and V who is teaching us all these lessons.”

Yes. You’re accepting it’s problematic. Which is what I’m arguing, not what you were arguing.

It’s hypocrisy. It’s exactly the same paradox that every revolutionary movement faces, the one where a small core of true believers willing to kill for the cause decide to impose freedom. Most use the same tactic V does – educating the masses to see their chains. And in virtually every case, when that doesn’t work because people aren’t interested in listening, the true believers start shooting government officials instead.

“He is, as you say, unknowable…but he’s also all knowing (again, is there any moment where anything in the text surprises him?)”

We. Don’t. Know. We deliberately don’t know. He has secret control of vast amounts of information. Access to FATE allows him to be steps ahead of his opponents. He has a plan to work down a list killing people, and he does it. Does that make him sympathetic, sane and right? Rather the opposite, surely? We’ve no idea what’s going on in that head, but any attempt at assessing his psychology from his actions comes to some form of mental illness, even if it’s just ‘obsessive hoarding’. It makes the ‘V’s normal’ reading pretty difficult to sustain. But even then, it’s not impossible. And we have no idea. We know he sets out to do things and they tend to get done, we’ve no idea if every single thing that happens is part of his plan.

Where does the ‘all part of the plan’ thing start and finish? Does he *plan* to kill Almond? That is the first domino in the chain that directly leads to the death of Susan, so it’s an important question to ask. Is that God working in a mysterious way, his beautiful plan hidden in plain sight … or is it an example of unintended consequences? I tend towards the latter, but it’s impossible to rule out the idea that V’s entire plan is to create one embittered widow with access to a gun and Adam Susan and everything else is window dressing.

“Again, to convince me, there needs to be some evidence in the text that V is not a privileged character; that he isn’t all-knowing, or that his actions are effectively criticized in the text. Saying that you see problems with his actions doesn’t mean that the text presents them as problems.”

OK. V is a ‘privileged character’ in the sense that he’s the title character, the protagonist, and that he’s fighting Nazis. He has narrative privilege. But not moral perfection, which is the aspect of God you missed out. There’s no claim to moral perfection. You are confusing effectiveness with rectitude, and if you’re running with the ‘the story leads us to think’ line, then the story leads us to a last page where everything’s *fucked*, not solved. And the book subverts the three things on my list, anyway: he’s *not* the title character, he doesn’t have a name (p26), Evey has as good a claim on being the protagonist (Finch does, come to that), and the Nazis are petty bureaucrats all with everyday lives and problems. If you’re looking for cartoonish figures who do cartoony things like plant bombs and torture teenage girls, there’s only one candidate.

As for ‘criticising him in the text’ – his actions are constantly being challenged. That’s pretty much Evey’s only function. I’m not sure what you’re after, here: a character to address the fourth wall and say ‘killing and torturing people is wrong’?

Read the last page of book one, (p86 of the graphic novel). That’s the explicit statement that there are a lot of questions about V’s agenda, that it is *deliberately* impossible to get to the truth. The only wrong answer is ‘I have the right answer’. Which, of course, is itself a paradoxical statement.

I think this is a crucial point. Knowledge and morality aren’t the same, obviously…but they’re not entirely divorced either. When you have a character who is smarter than everyone else, who appears to always be effective, and who never stumbles, it’s almost impossible to see a place to get moral purchase against him. If V can create order out of chaos; if he can see things no one else can, then how can we question him morally? This could be part of Moore’s problem in trying to undercut V, actually. The pulp supertropes lead him to make V so cool and awesome and superior that the moral ambiguity ends up being flattened.

“If V can create order out of chaos; if he can see things no one else can, then how can we question him morally?”

V creates chaos out of order, though. And that’s the answer to your question – we judge him by his works. If he’s not right, he’s simply a powerful thug pursuing selfish aims. Like Macbeth and Faust who, oh look, are directly referenced in the book. An effective, powerful thug who is always one step ahead is *worse* than a bumbling one.

Is this a post 9-11 thing or an American thing? He’s ‘cool and awesome’ so his murders and torturing aren’t evils? Torture’s bad, m’kay. It’s never justifiable. I don’t see that we need explicit confirmation that Evey’s confinement was horrible, I’m happy to read the account and come to my own conclusion vis a vis its horribleness.

What we have is what we might call the Life of Brian paradox – the crowd are told they’re all individuals and chant ‘yes, we’re all individuals’ in unison. V leads us all the way. He sets up a successor and tells her to do what she will … but sets it up so she’ll forever be in his shadow.

I think, just generally, that taking a man in a mask at face value is probably not a wise thing to do.

OmGoddess! What a bunch of self satisfied arseholes! To those whO read V. With an open mind Ty. And for those who saw the movie because reading is beyond their intelligence level. I say all the negitive christain allergory, that the works puts forth is there becaus.. Its true. And you arseholes can’t stand being shown your wrong! Like a puppy who continously piddles on the carpet, if your nose isnt rubbed in it how will you ever learn? Thank you Alan Moore!

I take Alan Moore at his word. I think he’s said somewhere that he intended for V to be this morally complex work where the evils of authoritarianism are contrasted with the evils of terrorism, with neither side being whitewashed. Very few people — even among the very sophisticated — actually read the book this way. Instead almost everyone sees V as the straightforward protagonist and his philosophy as wholly endorsed by the narrative. Either most of us are just reading it wrong or maybe he didn’t sell it, you know? And sometimes the simplest solution is the best one.

So to me, all of the hints and suggestions that V maybe isn’t a good guy are intended by the author, but…you know…he failed. He made V too cool. He made the ‘bad guys’ too vile. He ended up glamorizing one side and not the other. It isn’t us reading V wrong, it’s him screwing up.

I think Isaac and many others here are right on the money with the flaws in the work — and especially about Moore’s identification of himself with V and the reader with Evey. This explains how Moore — an unquestionably brilliant guy — managed to screw up so badly. It’s just another V word — vanity. He put too much of himself into V, and so he needs V to be cool and right all the time.

We’re left with the unmistakable parallel between Moore and V, both gazing down at the public, frustrated that they LIKE the the violence and misogyny (whores and politicians, if you will) and the corporate comics wondering why people don’t just accept being bullied into little artsy-fartsy anarcho-pacifist lives. The only conclusion — since after all it can’t be anything the Artist did wrong — is that they’re stupid and not worthy of being saved. So he passes judgment.

In Moore scholarship, your argument is known as ‘oh look, another berk who thinks Alan Moore’s Rorschach’.

V for Vendetta has pretty much exactly the same story as From Hell. Loony killing people in far weirder ways than his plan actually requires and taking time out to lecture people about his grand visions; middleaged policeman getting increasingly baffled and frustrated. So … is Moore Gull, too? Is the moral of the story that Moore wants us to go out and slit up some Cockney whores?

You’re projecting your view of Moore (Moore now, when he’s nearly 60, of course, not the 30 year old who wrote the book) onto V. Which is all very jolly, but not actually useful or sensible.

Been a while since I read “From Hell,” but “not accomplishing what he sought to accomplish”? Didn’t he conclude the heart-burning ritual, receive a vision of the future — one of the most-jaw-droppingly astonishing, utterly unexpected moments in comics — exult, “I have given birth to the 20th Century!”?

(I’m afraid to speak of the book much, though; pretty soon the avalanche of “Moore is a misogynist,” “‘From Hell’ is a book filled with misogyny,” “It’s obvious that Moore hates women, he delights in violence against them” charges will begin…)

Actually, if I remember correctly, at the very end of his future vision, he’s realizes that he understands nothing, and sort of dissipates. It’s been a while since I’ve read it..but I think Moore goes out of his way to puncture the idea that he’s a success in any way.

I don’t think Alan Moore “is” Rorschach — or V, for that matter. Alan Moore is this tall weird-looking version of the Artist from Cerebus. Rorschach and V are a vigilante and a terrorist.

I do think that Alan Moore indulged himself a wee bit in creating these badass characters and that somewhat naturally the audience likes them more than Moore wants the audience to.

The difference is that Watchmen successfully undercuts Rorschach and V doesn’t quite successfully undercut V. Maybe that’s because V is a “bad” anarchist instead of being a “bad” right-winger, and thus closer to Moore’s own sympathies — maybe it’s because V is highly erudite, and thus closer to Moore’s own self-conception. (Rorshach, for what it’s worth, appears to be the better prose stylist.) So it’s a little harder for Moore to dump crap on his own views and habits.

“I think Moore goes out of his way to puncture the idea that he’s a success in any way.”

Whereas V ends on a triumphant note and everything’s sorted?

There’s a point here: Moore’s male protagonists don’t tend to be identification figures. They’re either psychos like V, Gull or Rorschach or aloof god/husbands like Swampy, Marvelman or Dr Manhattan. They’re certainly not stand ins for Moore, at least no more than any fictional character represents an aspect of its author.

Sorry about that — posted an unfinished thought, and now my last line doesn’t make sense.

By “cast as the PC police,” what I mean is — no, I don’t think that because Moore depicts certain actions he approves of them. I don’t even think that stories that revel in (stylized and/or sanitized) violence approve of violence or endorse it in any meaningful way — catharsis is a real thing, you know. Quentin Tarantino is not a sociopath. Stan Lee has never (as far as I know) shot someone with a ray gun of any sort.

My point is that V for Vendetta gives a lot of good readers the impression that Moore approves of V. Moore has said he doesn’t approve of V, and I believe him. But I don’t think all those good readers are wrong — I think Moore screwed up.

I am actually reading From Hell now…it would be hard to get the impression that Moore endorses anything Gull is doing.

Pen, the PC police? No! I merely stated my opinion. I think Watchmen and V are ripping gopd reads. Now i expect you will inform me of my Moral, intellectual and taste in authors. One question begs the asking? If you disagree with the subject matter why in Goddess name read it? I do not love or hate Alan Moore I respect his achievements. When you reach the level Moore has you will have earned that respect as well. Yes, yes I am a bitch. Alas like V it is my burden to bare. And like Ro, I will see my agenda dome.

But…the obsessiveness with which Moore creates aloof omnipotent overmen, and the way they insistently mirror his own rage for aesthetic control…I mean, you don’t think that’s at all telling?

In that quote waaaay up thread, Moore talks about torturing Evey as a way to sublimate/actualize/signal his own desire to control others. There’s definitely a strain of megalomania in his work, which I think he uses, embraces, rejects, or all three at once, as the case may be. Moore isn’t Ozymandias or Swamp Thing of course…but they are him to some extent: they speak his words, they’re part of his dreams. I think when you say “they’re certainly not stand ins for Moore,” that “certainly” elides a lot.

That’s interesting, when I think of Prospero ordering the League to go about their missions in the latest League, Prospero is in a sense another Moore stand in isn’t he? The Megalomaniacal good wizard sending the cast of characters out to accomplish meaningful things?

Mike wrote:

“Been a while since I read “From Hell,” but “not accomplishing what he sought to accomplish”? Didn’t he conclude the heart-burning ritual, receive a vision of the future ”

Been a very long time since I read it, but if I recall currently, it’s implied Gull kills the wrong woman in the end, screwing up the ritual. The footnote indicates she was historically reportedly seen a few hours after her death. Moore’s explanation is another woman was sleeping over at her house, and Gull’s intended target left for Ireland right before Gull arrived. Gull didn’t realize he was killing the wrong person.

He has a vision of his intended target when he dies, and she appears to have a supernatural sense since she sees him as a ghost. Gull is frightened and confused, then is no more.

Bit late to the party but ah well;)
Interesting article and comments, wanted to give a bit more insight from a Brit perspective regarding the Fawkes mask in V:
Your common variety citizen of the UK will know of Guy Fawkes, that he was Catholic, that he attempted to blow up the Protestant Houses of Parliament and that the intended date was the 5th of November. Essentially what is told in the rhyme. I can’t recall where I learnt this little ditty but assume it was in school while relatively young. This is not an event that would receive any serious study in school either.

Onto the festivities; in the week(s) leading up to the 5th street urchins and young scally wags will construct a Guy effigy, sit on the street and ask for a ‘penny for the Guy’. The night itself consists of burning of said effigy, public/private firework displays and bonfires.
That really is all there is to it, no other traditions take place that I can think of, it’s treated as an excuse for a fireworks party(and who doesn’t like one of them?).

I’ve always found it faintly amusing/disturbing that we continue to blindly celebrate this in the UK, given the underlying message of the event is: ‘Don’t mess with those in power, we’re in control and always will be’.

The fact that the monarchy/emerging governments defence of their rule is still celebrated over 400 years later would no doubt delight them, it’s also a powerful demonstration of the control and influence they exerted on the populace that echoes with us still.

As such I’ve personally always loved Moores choice of the Fawkes mask for V, if we accept that he is writing for a British audience, then Guy Fawkes strikes the perfect chord with the British psyche, making V instantly recognisable as an anti-establishment figure.

I love how you pathologize a professional writer’s use of genre tropes while working in a genre. “The obsessiveness with which Christie creates superhumanly perceptive detectives,” “The obsessiveness with which Louis L’Amour creates tough, straight-shooting cowboys,” “The obsessiveness with which Vargas creates beautiful, shapely girls…”

If this were an obsession, his non-superhero work (of which there are bucketloads) would be laden with “aloof omnipotent overmen,” would it not? Yet, it’s not; isn’t that “telling”?

(On the other “obsessive” hand, I laughed out loud when, in Crumb’s book on Kafka, prose telling how K. was employed at the Worker’s Accident Insurance Institute was accompanied by an illo of big-butted young women, featuring clunkily old-fashioned shoes, dropping dishes as they fell down some stairs.)

I believe it was Chandler who spoke of writing which expanded the boundaries of [genre] formula, without violating what it is that makes the formula work. That Moore doesn’t want to v”break the formula” utterly is what causes misinterpretation.

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…and the way they insistently mirror his own rage for aesthetic control…I mean, you don’t think that’s at all telling?
———————

Ooooo, “RAGE” for aesthetic control! Doesn’t Chris Ware, who’s even traveled to China to supervise the printing of his tomes, display far more “rage” there? How about that writer (Proust?) who told how he spent a whole morning putting a comma in, then an entire afternoon taking it out? The RAGE!!!

And note how Moore, though his script notes are exceedingly detailed, regularly tells artist collaborators, “…or do what you think is best here.”

And, in an interview quoted earlier, Moore says “I didn’t want to tell people what to think, I just wanted to tell people to think…”

———————-
In that quote waaaay up thread, Moore talks about torturing Evey as a way to sublimate/actualize/signal his own desire to control others.
———————

Typically enough, that’s not what he says. Thanks to Rossum (“Love your robots, man!”) for the quote in his Sept. 19 post. It’s not a “way to sublimate/actualize/signal his own desire to control others” (note the heapin’ helpings of psychobabble).

Moore says that he could “far more get behind” an attempt, via a couple months’ worth of imprisonment and torture, in order to “mentally and spiritually set [them] free…An attempt to push [them] to a point where [they have] to wake up to [themselves] as an individual with [their] own will and own wants and destiny that is not just part of the carpeting of the world, but is a person, is a fully human being”…

…than he could “get behind killing people.”

In other words, rather than having an obsession to “control others,” Moore is saying he could more approve of V’s “mad way” of setting Evey free, than of killing.

As for its being a “mad way”; as a anthropology buff, I’m very much aware of how common it is for adolescent initiation ceremonies to subject a young male (kidnapped in the middle of the night from his parent’s home by fearsomely garbed figures! Held captive and terrorized!) to be pushed into adulthood via ritualized stress and trauma.

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John says:

…My point is that V for Vendetta gives a lot of good readers the impression that Moore approves of V. Moore has said he doesn’t approve of V, and I believe him. But I don’t think all those good readers are wrong — I think Moore screwed up.
———————

Yeah, we get that “Moore screwed up” argument a lot. “Moore didn’t make V and Rorschach utterly vile assholes, simplistic villains with no redeeming features, who constantly screw up and fail, so readers were able to find them admirable and cool.”

How about, a significant portion of the audience “screwed up”? When there were riots and outrage at the premieres of “Ubu Roi” and “Le Sacre du Pritemps,” do we say Jarry and Stravinsky/Nijinsky “screwed up”?

they were trying to outrage and they succeeded…perhaps too well, in some sense, but I don’t think the analogy works very well for the way in which Moore (arguably) failed in V.

And I’m not pathologizing Moore. I think his obsession with uberpowerful characters is well within psychological norms. That’s part of why it’s interesting (and I’m quite sure he knows that’s why it’s interesting.)

This is mildly off-topic, but I did want to weigh in here on Le Sacre du Printemps, because I’d make the argument that “trying to outrage” was not at all Stravinsky/Nijinsky’s intent. Particularly on Nijinsky’s behalf (and that’s probably only because I read much more incessantly about him than I do Stravinsky), I’d assert that he was always trying to create something that felt real and true to him, and though audiences *had* reacted negatively to his work in the past (and surely he knew many would dislike it), his intent was never to shock or outrage them, nor do I think he was pleased with that outcome. I think you could argue that Sergei Diaghilev enjoyed the controversy, but not Nijinsky.

I’m not sure how/if this relates to the argument at hand, but I think it is impossible to place the responsibility for the audience’s reaction to Le Sacre du Printemps solely in the hands of the artists or the audience. Both played a part. Stravinsky/Nijinsky (especially Nijinsky) failed to create something the audience could understand or connect to (whether this is something an artist is obligated to do is another argument, of course, but I think he did want this), and the audience was unable to stretch its collective hearts/minds far enough to understand it as well. Did *anyone* screw up, or no one? I kind of think “no one.”

Quick comment, re: Evey . . . Moore is explicitly showing what happens to women in these circumstances, during a time when womens’ stories were just starting to appear in the mass media . . . think the mothers of the disappeared, the nuns in Nicaragua, Woman Warrior, etc. Rather than misogynist, I see Moore as an auto-didactic feminist. He’s emerging from a misogynist culture through his own effort, AND discovering a feminist consciousness at the same time . . .

they were trying to outrage and they succeeded…perhaps too well, in some sense, but I don’t think the analogy works very well for the way in which Moore (arguably) failed in V.
————————

Certainly with “Ubu Roi” there was — starting with the play’s very first word — a jab-in-the-eye effect; but, as shown in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubu_Roi , and eloquently explained re Nijinsky by Melinda Beasi, there’s far deeper intent at work than a mere adolescent “trying to outrage.”

One could say, George W. Bush is “arguably” the greatest President in American history, because that’s what Republicans feverishly maintained during his reign. As for Moore “arguably” failing in “V for Vendetta,” yes, to the variety of feminists that makes the most noise (as with Fundamentalist Christians and Islamists), he failed to make a work that was Politically Correct, moralistically and ideologically party-line, and simplistic enough to fit the Procrustean Bed of their beliefs.

As a commercial artist (or “graphic designer,” if in the mood to feel elegant) I am intimately aware of how disastrous is “design by committee.” Re the noxious Helen Heyer, we get this suggestion how she might be rendered acceptable to the Commissar-ettes:

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There are various ways that Helen’s sexuality and manipulativeness could have been thought through or dealt with in ways which pushed back against the tropes that she’s constructed out of. Moore could have provided us with some sense of why she views her sexuality the way she does; he could have shown her learning something from her experiences…
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Yes, and if Iago had been a woman, or black, we’d get the P.C. Police saying Shakespeare should show the character’s “backstory,” have him “learning something from [his] experiences.” So instead of the greatest villain in literature, a vividly poisonous piece of malevolence, we’d get…a mediocrity.

But, a well-rounded, psychologically more “complex” mediocrity.

Not that the Commissar-ettes would find this acceptable; as Obama found when trying to deal with Republicans, when engaging with ferociously ideological fanatics, you cave in endlessly, give them everything they want, and they’re still not satisfied.

Because Perpetual Outrage is a useful driving mechanism; having proved themselves unable to change the world past a certain minimum, further improve the lot of their group, manufactured and loudly-broadcast outrage — whether it’s about the “Muhammed cartoons,” sports team American Indian mascots, or porn — creates the impression that Something Is Being Done, that those shrilling the loudest are the True Voice of the Movement.

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But he did none of that; he just has her being a nightmare misogynist stereotype, and then he fantasizes revenge on her by having her gang raped.
——————————

The little fact that not only was she not raped is utterly irrelevant; as is the fact that the bunch of vagrants (rather than raping her immediately, as would have happened in real life) were a pathetic lot, begging her for their “favors” rather than taking them outright:

Tramp: “Gissa shag, ay?”

HH: “”No! What’s in it for me?”

Tramp: “Yuh give ‘im one…”

HH: “He had food, to replace what that rabble in the city stole from me! What have you got?”

Finch comes along; she throws herself in his arms. When he rejects her “This mob aren’t much, but given time we could build a small army…Oh Eddie, we can do so much together, you and me…” offer, she screams “QUEER!” at his retreating form.

So, a bunch of pathetic drunks whining and begging for a lay are transformed into savage brutes who actually did “gang-rape” her, that misogynyst Moore salivating over his “revenge on her.”

Sure, HH was shown as getting her “just desserts,” the sexual currency she cynically employed devalued, so she’s reduced to swapping a shag for a sandwich, or other doubtless moldy bit of chow. Yet, compared to Prothero, driven into insanity by the incineration of his doll collection, or the Bishop, poisoned by his communion wafer, she gets off lightly.

She could tell the bums to buzz off and strike forth on her own, along that road. Her intelligence, cunning and forcefulness of personality are still there. But, is she “hooked” onto latching on powerful males to get power, unable to learn?

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The response “well, women are like that” is really, really unconvincing, not to mention depressing, and the plea, “well there are bad men in the book as well,” is also not very effective.
——————————-

Re “unconvincing”; to True Believers, a mountain of contradictory evidence will fail to sway them by one iota from the utter certainty of their righteousness.

And, I’d thought I must have said, “some women are like Helen Heyer,” which through the magic of FeministoVision, became transmuted into the all-encompassing prejudice of “women are like that.”

But no, I never even said as much (no time to check all my other, even earlier comments); to…

———————
Noah Berlatsky says:

…at the end of the comic she is set up to be gang raped, and it’s presented as just deserts, as far as I can tell. She’s a misogynist female stereotype, and she is punished for it in the stereotypical misogynist way.
———————–

…I responded:

“I guess no writer had better ever feature a black criminal, or one who is not-very-bright, in their works. Because that’s a racist stereotype, and even if a massive amount of explaining is expended (‘and even then it’s often dicey’) about how those characters are ‘victims of society’ — denied opportunity, education — some will always condemn the writer as racist, using racist stereotypes, in a racist work, making racist arguments in a racist fashion.

In other words, if a creator features a single Oppressed Minority behaving in ways which happen to correspond to stereotypes, they are GUILTY of contributing to racism/sexism/homophobia/anti-Semitism/etc.

So, no more “queenly” gays, no matter how sympathetically limned; no black criminals, no business-savvy Jews, no hard-working, studious Orientals, no black mothers on welfare, no drunken, jobless Indians; let’s have a sanitized world.

Because if the ideologues can’t accomplish equality in actuality, they can enforce it in fiction.

——————————-
And I’m not pathologizing Moore. I think his obsession with uberpowerful characters is well within psychological norms. That’s part of why it’s interesting (and I’m quite sure he knows that’s why it’s interesting.)
——————————-

No, you’re not “pathologizing Moore,” you just keep repeating — despite my proving that it ain’t so, that he’s done tons of work without those — that he has this “obsession.”

But…lots of people have obsessions, Mike. It’s not abnormal in the least. This is one of Freud’s main — and really, most convincing —- points. Neurosis is normal. Lots of artists — pathological and otherwise — use their neurosis to create art, and when they do that, they actually make their work more accessible and meaningful, because neurosis are really well distributed throughout society.

I mean…Moore’s a fairly odd guy. Is that an incredibly controversial thing to say? He’s a big old hippie; he’s obviously quite difficult to deal with personally; he thinks he’s a wizard. All of that is probably less normal than his obsession with power — which is an obsession at the center of our society, and of modernity, and possibly just of people in general.

“I guess no writer had better ever feature a black criminal, or one who is not-very-bright, in their works. Because that’s a racist stereotype, and even if a massive amount of explaining is expended (‘and even then it’s often dicey’) about how those characters are ‘victims of society’ — denied opportunity, education — some will always condemn the writer as racist, using racist stereotypes, in a racist work, making racist arguments in a racist fashion.

In other words, if a creator features a single Oppressed Minority behaving in ways which happen to correspond to stereotypes, they are GUILTY of contributing to racism/sexism/homophobia/anti-Semitism/etc.”

It would be incredibly bigoted and utterly vile if they portrayed the black criminal as being justifiably raped/beaten by a bunch of white cops at the end of the book as punishment for their evil yes.

But…lots of people have obsessions, Mike. It’s not abnormal in the least.
—————————-

Note how my argument is totally ignored; who cares about the marketplace practicalities that, in a business where “product” and job opportunity is overwhelmingly superhero-centric, Alan Moore ended up doing much superhero work?

We shift instead to, “lots of people have obsessions.” And we get this “lots of” here a lot; as I’ve pointed out before, an utterly meaningless bit of rhetoric. “Lots of men are child abusers” is a technically accurate statement (even if it were as little as 1% of the male population, that would mean millions of “pedos”), yet creates the effect that it’s a highly common phenomenon.

1. Compulsive preoccupation with a fixed idea or an unwanted feeling or emotion, often accompanied by symptoms of anxiety.
2. A compulsive, often unreasonable idea or emotion.
———————————
obsession
1. (Psychiatry) Psychiatry a persistent idea or impulse that continually forces its way into consciousness, often associated with anxiety and mental illness
2. a persistent preoccupation, idea, or feeling
———————————http://www.thefreedictionary.com/obsession

Never mind that Moore began doing satiric undergrounds, went on to SF — much satiric — at “2000AD,” and not until entering American “comicspace” was his career heavily occupied with the “capes and cowls” bunch. And the huge amount of substantial work he’s done since attaining financial independence — from the ill-starred “Big Numbers” to “Voice of the Fire,” “From Hell,” ALL his performance pieces, and much more — don’t feature superheroes.

Moore certainly enjoys the idea of superheroes, likes to play with the genre’s possibilities. “Obsessed”? I think not.

Now, to “Moore the rape-loving misogynist, who’s pushing the ‘Fascism is unmanly’ theme in ‘V for Vendetta,” we now get the “Moore is obsessed with superheroes” smear.

These girls are asking him to draw a Valentine’s Day poster. What does he turn in? One featuring a masked superhero shooting forth an eye-blast. Getting the chance to work in a “Raw”-type mag (see http://comicsbulletin.com/reviews/4484/fair-trade-comics-pussey/ for the meanest Art Spiegelman caricature ever), what does Pussey turn in? Superhero comics! Is Moore so monomaniacally “set in his course”?

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Noah Berlatsky says:

This is one of Freud’s main — and really, most convincing —- points. Neurosis is normal.
—————————–

In the fashion that Christianity makes its living by selling the cure to a disease that it invented, as someone else noted — the sign at the church up the street currently proclaiming, “He That Believeth and is Baptized Shall be Saved” — so does Freud, by making mental illness universal, thereby vastly increase the pool of those who “need” to pay a hefty sum for years of frequent sessions of “venting” to a therapist who way as well be a mannequin with a timer, for all the feedback they provide, and at the end of which, the grand achievement is to be “no unhappier than the average person.”

…Whatta pair of scams!

Countless “primitive” or long-ago societies throughout the world and history would find that “neurosis is normal” attitude grotesquely absurd, or incomprehensible. (Just as I recall some “primitives” were flabbergasted than in “civilized” society, some people could be so unhappy they’d kill themselves.)

————————
Lots of artists — pathological and otherwise — use their neurosis to create art, and when they do that, they actually make their work more accessible and meaningful, because neurosis are really well distributed throughout society.
————————

So neuroses-driven art is…more accessible? Why, then, are Norman Rockwell or Rembrandt far more popular than Munch or Schiele, Neil Simon far more popular than Strindberg?

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I mean…Moore’s a fairly odd guy. Is that an incredibly controversial thing to say?
————————–

No; but that his work is loaded with misogyny, that “V for Vendetta” equates fascism with “unmanliness,” that he’s “obsessed” with superheroes and fantasies of power over others, is.

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He’s a big old hippie; he’s obviously quite difficult to deal with personally; he thinks he’s a wizard. All of that is probably less normal than his obsession with power — which is an obsession at the center of our society, and of modernity, and possibly just of people in general.
————————-

————————
wizard
1. (Spirituality, New Age, Astrology & Self-help / Alternative Belief Systems) a male witch or a man who practises or professes to practise magic or sorcery
2. a person who is outstandingly clever in some specified field; expert
————————http://www.thefreedictionary.com/wizard

Since Moore actually does practice magic — which hardly means he can “apparate,” or turn people into toads — he easily qualifies.

Thinks he’s a wizard? Ah, but we’re on this grand crusade to smear Moore as a mental case: delusional, obsessive, misogynistic, mind incessantly filled with power-fantasies.

Which, when it gets described as character assassination, is then minimized with “neurosis is normal; lots of people have obsessive/sexist thoughts; an obsession with power is central to society”-type arguments.

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Marcus says:

[Mike quote] “…In other words, if a creator features a single Oppressed Minority behaving in ways which happen to correspond to stereotypes, they are GUILTY of contributing to racism/sexism/homophobia/anti-Semitism/etc.”

It would be incredibly bigoted and utterly vile if they portrayed the black criminal as being justifiably raped/beaten by a bunch of white cops at the end of the book as punishment for their evil yes
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So, since Helen Heyer was NOT raped or beaten at the end of the book, Moore is therefore not guilty, right?

Ah, but reality means nothing to the True Believer, who sees what mere mortals cannot, the better to be in a state of perpetual outrage and certitude over their moral superiority, enlightenment, the utter righteousness of their cause. Their court is about as likely to come up with a “not guilty” verdict as one of Stalin’s.

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AB says:

I’d also point out to Mike that Iago is far from the simplistic villain he’s often made out to be. He has an authentic grievance against Othello.
——————————–

Alas, I’m disappointed! Everything I’ve read about the play depict Iago’s evil as incomprehensible malignity; one critic wondered if it was the fact he was loudly praised as such a good, trustworthy guy that drove him to scheme in the destruction of Othello. (“Think I’m so nice, do they? I’ll show them…”)

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And Mike, the feminists aren’t out to get you, you know.
——————————

When a creator as intelligent and fine, with liberal credentials as impeccable, who’s created countless strong, admirable, richly complex women characters (“Halo Jones” an early favorite), gets so vilely, unjustly slammed, I take it personally.

That so many members of a movement whose central goal is so utterly sensible and righteous — equal rights for women — are eager to resort to such grotesquely dishonest distortions (we’re in “those liberals are opposed to the war in Iraq because they hate America, they’re on the side of the terrorists!” territory) is disheartening, even if hardly surprising.

Because what history teaches, and reality regularly reinforces, is that oppressed groups, freed and put in a position of power — even if here it’s only argumentative power — love nothing more than to get the chance to oppress and persecute others.

Rather than rendered nobler or more enlightened by the experience (as idealists idiotically assume), oppressed groups — with a few admirable individual exceptions — only think it’s wrong that they personally should be oppressed.

When a creator as intelligent and fine, with liberal credentials as impeccable, who’s created countless strong, admirable, richly complex women characters (“Halo Jones” an early favorite), gets so vilely, unjustly slammed, I take it personally.

Well, you shouldn’t. You can’t invest in the personality of an artist you admire – heroes all have feet of clay (which, ironically enough, is a major theme of books like Watchmen and, arguably, V). You end up twisting your own values to continue to admire things they do and say that aren’t necessarily admirable, or else feel unnecessarily hurt when they do or say something you can’t bring yourself to admire. Alan Moore, fine and important writer as he is, is just a bloke who’s good at something. He’s not your guru, and I don’t think he ever asked to be.

“Alan Moore, fine and important writer as he is, is just a bloke who’s good at something. He’s not your guru, and I don’t think he ever asked to be.”

So it’s OK to make a case that he’s ‘an odd guy who thinks he’s a wizard’, and that when his characters are insane they all reflect Moore’s own mental health issues, particularly as regards violence against women, but it’s not OK to challenge that position because that would be hero worship?

Yes, Moore’s work can usually be read many different ways. That’s a good thing, though. There’s a basic false premise with a lot of criticism of Alan Moore’s work: that the critic has thought longer and harder about the story that Moore himself did. They almost invariably pat themselves on the back for seeing problems with things that he carefully placed there *to be problematic*. It’s not hero worship to say that, it’s reading comprehension.

Jemima, if you read my other comments on this thread, you’ll see I agree with you on most of that. I did think the “thinks he’s a wizard” line was funny, though. Let’s face it, Moore’s magical pretensions are just a little bit ridiculous.

When a creator as intelligent and fine, with liberal credentials as impeccable, who’s created countless strong, admirable, richly complex women characters (“Halo Jones” an early favorite), gets so vilely, unjustly slammed, I take it personally.

Well, you shouldn’t. You can’t invest in the personality of an artist you admire…
—————–

Who says I’m “invested in his personality? (And no, I don’t consider brain-power — his intelligence — as part of his “personality.”)

I admire and appreciate him as a creator. As a person, though his principles may be fine, he can be a prickly cuss, unreasonable, coldly cutting artists and former friends off (in a “you are now dead to me” fashion), because of minor or imagined offenses.

I’d posted this on another HU thread; from S. R. Bissette’s blog:

————————-
After working hard all through 2010 with former 1963 creative partner(s) to arrive at a planned (with Alan’s permission throughout 2010) reprint edition of the original 1963 series ([created] circa 1993) that would adhere absolutely to Alan’s demands—including that of not using or mentioning his name or affiliation with the project (yes, we found a publisher despite that)—it all ended in a heartbeat early in 2011.

Alan simply pulled the plug, and thus it was all over but the tears.

…For what it’s worth and not worth, 1963 will never be legally reprinted in any language in our lifetimes.

…So, consider this:

In creator co-ownership, one partner can forever and willfully deep-six any future in any co-owned work—even completed, published work, that still has perceived or potential market value.

That, too, is part of creator ownership, and co-ownership, and creator rights, and must be taken into account in any discussion of the subject.

All of us who worked hard on 1963 back in 1992–93 earned whatever we would or will ever earn from that work back in 1993, and that was that.

We will never see a dime from any of that work again, while the quarterly royalties from the DC/Vertigo collected Swamp Thing editions…and John Constantine/Hellraiser arrive, for the most part, like clockwork.

If you had told the Bissette of 1990 that he’d never see a dime on any work done with Alan save the work-for-hire collaborative ventures we’d already put behind us by 1990, the Bissette of 1990 would have laughed and spit and ranted about the evils of work-for-hire.

Given the past decade’s long-distance and close-range spectacles related to Alan wanting to remove his name from, and/or the existence of, key collaborative works from prior decades, and experiencing first-hand the repercussions of his doing just that (with 1963), and surviving first-hand being exiled forever by said previous pal and creative partner, the Bissette of 2011 can only thank his lucky stars that he did his most extensive and lasting work with Mr. Moore under work-for-hire conditions for DC Comics.
—————————-http://srbissette.com/?p=13933

Now, it’s possible that someone who supposedly kneels in reverence toward Alan-Moore-the-person could find and post something which shows his Guru as acting like such a jerk…

…but it’s not very likely.

—————–
Patrick Brown says:

– heroes all have feet of clay…
———————

[SARCASM ALERT] (Staggers back in shock at the senses-shattering revelation…)

———————-
You end up twisting your own values to continue to admire things they do and say that aren’t necessarily admirable, or else feel unnecessarily hurt when they do or say something you can’t bring yourself to admire.
————————

Not by one iota. What irritates profoundly is distorted thinking, dishonest arguments, the incapacity to read or see what’s actually laid down on ink and paper, boosted by the infallibly reliable reality-warping idiocies of ideology.

I mean, we’ve got people not only stating as a truth, but getting convulsed in outrage over, the ABSOLUTE FACT THAT HELEN HEYER WAS RAPED (and now Marcus adds “BEATEN” to the mix). When, if you look at the comic, not only did neither thing happen, but the pathetic bunch of vagrants begging for her attentions are about as seriously threatening as the Fonz.

Tip of the proverbial hat to Jemima Cole for her eloquent response to that charge (which reminds of the Right’s accusation that liberals are all blind Obama-worshipers, as if we don’t have tons of problems with him, only “reality-based” ones)…

…and adding to the mix that spot-on perception about some Moore criticism.

Oh, by the way; re “Watchmen,” Moore’s most famous and substantial superhero comic. If Moore’s so obsessed with power, “…the obsessiveness with which Moore creates aloof omnipotent overmen…his obsession with uberpowerful characters”…

…why do ALL THE SUPERHEROES, in their goal that matters the most, FAIL??

Their successes are few and far between; many die ignobly; even Rorschach, who “dies best,” is shown unappealingly unmasked, face contorted with weeping; all fail utterly at preventing Ozymandias’ scheme; and at the end it looks like a pimply dullard — rather than a superhero — is about to bring down Ozzy’s house of cards.

Oct 1 7.39, you said ‘There’s definitely a strain of megalomania in his work, which I think he uses, embraces, rejects, or all three at once, as the case may be. Moore isn’t Ozymandias or Swamp Thing of course…but they are him to some extent’. It’s the post I was thinking of when I said people assume his work ‘reflects his own mental health issues’. I think Moore writes about megalomania a lot, I don’t think he is a megalomaniac, any more than I think JRR Tolkien was an elf.

Jemima, many, many artists (like many, many people) have neurosis and obsessions. This is not an artistic weakness. Moore’s an unusual and in many ways a very odd man. He’s obviously very interested in, and very attracted to, ideas of absolute power — as well as finding those ideas repulsive. That’s one of the things that makes his work interesting. You do him no favors by defensively insisting that he can have no emotional investment in his work in cases where such emotional investment might disturb suburbia.

‘I think that there’s something about the adventure format, it twists what you’re trying to say. I think you inevitably end up glorifying the man of action, which in the adventure comic is generally the man of violence’

I’m not being defensive. I’m saying I think you’re wrong and I can demonstrate that your argument’s inconsistent.

Moore’s characters are not stand ins for him. We can’t diagnose Alan Moore by reading about V or Rorschach. And if we try, we need to be careful to note that Moore started V thirty years ago, when he was 27. Even if he’s Wizard Crankypants now (and that’s a different debate, bottom line: he’s not), he wasn’t then.

There’s no reason you can’t. They’re part of his psyche. Treating the text as a diagnoses (though not absolutely of the author, but that’s a different argument) is a really standard way to think about texts.

You can certainly say he’s ambivalent about them. But to assert that he has absolutely no investment in them, or that they’re absolutely and entirely negative characters — not only is that simply improbable, it robs Moore’s work of much of its interest and energy. In your eagerness to defend him, you’re systematically making him out to be a much less interesting creator than he in fact is.

“Treating the text as a diagnoses is a really standard way to think about texts.”

Yes, one that’s usually beaten out of undergraduates in their first semester because it encourages sloppy arguments like ‘he’s a crazy old wizard, so something he wrote is an unconscious expression of that’. With no, y’know, personal knowledge of the author, reference to the context, let alone the text or to things the author’s said elsewhere.

Writers write about things that interest them. It doesn’t mean they only write about themselves. And people change over time. And if a character in a book says something, it doesn’t mean the author’s got it in his personal manifesto.

I’ve never, ever said he’s not invested in these characters or that he sees them only negatively (as it happens, Moore asserts in interview after interview that he sees Rorschach *almost* entirely negatively, and he sees V’s *methods* negatively). I’m saying that he’s deliberately made them problematic characters, ones readers are meant to challenge and to understand the difference between a visceral thrill in adventure fiction versus what you’d actually think if someone like that lived in your city.

Which makes him a far *more* interesting creator than someone who slaps little Alan Moore avatars in his stories so he can beat fictional people up.

If he deliberately makes them problematic characters, then it’s fair to suggest, as Isaac does, that they ended up being more problematic than he intended. Given the earlier quote about how he saw the book as a way to indulge his wish to torture people into agreeing with him, it’s also fair to suggest that his relationship with V is perhaps more ambivalent than he at times claimed.

You seem to be under the impression that I dislike Moore. That’s not the case; he’s one of my favorite creators. Watchmen is on my list of best comics ever. However, that doesn’t mean that I think he’s infallible. He isn’t…and thank goodness, because, like many creators, his best moments often come not from his intentions, or from his normality, but from his obsessions and weirdnesses. I don’t recognize your vision of Alan Moore as suburban scold, and I certainly don’t think he’d be a better creator, or a more moral one, if that’s who he was. Why take his wizardry away from him? Why rob him of his unconscious? In whose interest are you doing that? It’s certainly not in Moore’s.

I like Alan Moore quite a bit, and I find that V for Vendetta (along with his other To-Be-Filmed work, Watchmen) was an annoying political wank full of terrible, terrible visual art. Moore’s best work has always been with pulp characters and early supers, stuff like Superman and pastiches, Tom Strong (a Doc Savage) knock-off. When working in the field of pulps and supers Moore is the A1 Supremo, but when allowed to indulge his inner Artiste (like most Artsy-types) he comes out with ugly, incomprehensible crap.

1984 isn’t that good, either. It’s a distinctively left-wing fear of a right-wing national-socialism and shows little awareness of humanistic totalitarianism or leftist thought control; it’s essentially reacting a kind of totalitarianism that was already dead when the author put his pen to page. Orwell wrote some good stuff, but his novel was naive and distinctively leftoid.

Supergirl1056:
”1984 isn’t that good, either. It’s a distinctively left-wing fear of a right-wing national-socialism and shows little awareness of humanistic totalitarianism or leftist thought control; it’s essentially reacting a kind of totalitarianism that was already dead when the author put his pen to page. Orwell wrote some good stuff, but his novel was naive and distinctively leftoid.”

[…] problem with the franchise, and other works of pop culture profiting off of revolution, as in V for Vendetta (2006), isn’t in the linking of low-brow fascinations with high-brow aspirations, it comes from […]